In his role as CIO for Consumer & Community Banking (CCB) at JPMorgan Chase, Gill Haus oversees a $4 billion annual technology budget and leads more than 12,000 technologists worldwide. He is also a member of the company’s CCB leadership team and the company’s global technology leadership team (GTL).
Haus demonstrated his passion for technology in previous positions at digital native companies, such as PayPal and AOL, and later at other financial services companies such as Capital One. Even with his current managerial responsibilities, he always finds time to keep up with the latest technology and indulge in his favorite hobbies: gaming and DJing. On a recent episode of the Tech Whisperers podcast, Haus spoke about how his experiences shaped the way he leads, his intention to reinvent software delivery practices, and how he uses agile principles to improve employee and customer experiences.
After the show, we spent a little more time digging into his leadership playbook, focusing in particular on how he’s growing the next generation of digital leaders at Chase. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Dan Roberts: What can technologists do to differentiate themselves today?
Gill Haus: One way is by being the “respectful squeaky wheel.” In every business there are things that need to be improved. And even if you do everything right today, there are other ways to do something tomorrow. It’s incredibly important that people who see something that needs improvement push for change.
But you can push for change and make everyone around you hate you and ignore you and don’t want to do it and cause a lot of tension and destroy the culture, or you can do it in a positive way. For example, you can ask questions: What are we trying to solve? What have we not thought of? You can also build a relationship and offer to help. This kind of behavior actually impacts organizations more, but they usually require a little more work from the individual. Just saying something isn’t working won’t help anyone and it won’t convince your colleagues to follow your advice.
The other way technologists can differentiate themselves is by having a passion to grow and improve. People say: “I want to be a manager and I want to grow. How do I do that?” The way you do that is by worrying about solving the problems you see and doing something about it instead of waiting for someone to give you a problem to solve.
How do you encourage people to bring up problems?
I highly value encouraging employees, regardless of their level, to raise issues so that we can solve them. It takes time to build trust, but that trust pays off in the long run. So we make it easy for someone to say, “I think there’s a problem here,” and they know they’ll be believed and listened to. When I say, “You’re right, I got it, I’m going to follow up” and I do, the word spreads throughout the organization. I hear people say all the time go to Gill or Rohan [Amin, Chief Product Officer of Chase]† You can tell them because they will break down walls to help you get the job done. The bottom line is that people watch what you do more than listen to what you say. When you keep your promises to people, that positive behavior spreads throughout the organization.
The other thing I try to nurture culturally is the importance of being nice to people, saying thanks when people bring things up, celebrating the good and the bad. For example, if someone raises a problem, we celebrate that they found something, that they were perfect, and now we think we have a plan to move forward and do things the right way.
The market for technical talent is tight. How do you navigate that and make sure you have the talent to stay ready for the future?
We spend a lot of time on our career mobility opportunities. This is about our talent through a diversity lens: where are people strong, do they have opportunities to grow and how can we put them in positions where they will develop the right skills. That’s harder, but it’s something I’m really proud of because often the managers love the people who work for them and don’t want them to go to another team. But the right thing to do is to let that person go so they can build that multifaceted experience. So we highly value career mobility across the company because it helps our talent grow and helps someone become an even more complete technologist.
We also do a lot of training. We are modernizing our systems and will eventually leave our mainframes. But we don’t leave those people behind. We will train them, and that starts with leaders. We have many leaders who are currently making the journey to become more modern technologists. If someone is interested in technology and intellectually curious, we can train them. We do it to make sure we can meet the demand we have for resources and to take people for the ride. That’s how you win the hearts and minds of talent. They are the future of the company. New technology is wonderful, but we can’t ignore all the incredible work and systems we have here.
Can you tell us about some of the initiatives you’ve implemented that are making a big difference in terms of talent and culture?
We have something called PowerUp, an internal, multi-day technology conference hosted by and for our global technology organization with personal learning sessions for the company’s technologists. The content focuses on strategies to help employees adopt new tools, practices and ways of working, as well as meeting other people, building relationships, and being educated about everything from data and machine learning to the cloud. We usually also have a hackathon with that, so that technologists from our company can also regularly learn something new. That’s a powerful thing – it speaks to the fact that we want to make sure that people here continue to grow. Ultimately, we want people to have the opportunity to build an interesting career with us.
We also have something called Tech Connect, a program that helps people with a passion for innovation, technology and financial services jump-start their careers with intensive Java training over several weeks.
Another great event that technologists around the world look forward to every year is our Innovation Week, which includes global and local keynotes, as well as local hands-on learning, discussion sessions and panels. Innovation Week gives technologists the opportunity to collaborate with key experts on innovation topics and, through a global hackathon, collaborate on innovative solutions that will help the company.
When it comes to hiring, we hire a lot of engineers, but we also know that there are great “engineers” out there who don’t get through the traditional engineering track. One way we can find them is through our Emerging Talent Software Engineer program, which is aimed at individuals who have previously held positions in other industries before deciding to embark on a career in technology. The program gives them hands-on experience with ongoing peer and mentor support, professional development opportunities, assigned program managers, and access to senior leaders.
Those are great ways to bring in more talent, but the program also helps the talent we already have. Being a part of these changes, whether you’re involved in a hackathon for PowerUp or mentoring someone through our Emerging Talent Software Engineer program, means you’re making a difference to other people’s careers. That becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy in a positive way. And that benefits the climate, because it’s a hot labor market like we’ve never seen it before.
What are you doing to mentor junior leaders and make them more familiar with the company?
Here’s an example: I have a monthly business review with my team and I invite six to seven high performers from every level in the organization, but usually more junior levels, to attend them all. This way they get to see the entire dialogue. They gain insight into the conversation we’re having, everything from our objectives and key results and metrics to our hiring to our demos.
We also ask them to read the material beforehand and then ask questions, because asking questions to a senior audience doesn’t really get any easier, whatever level you are at. It is a skill that must be learned and honed over time. They will then use that experience in future assignments. It helps them grow and it builds confidence in them as they grow.
It is also about encouraging intellectual curiosity. What I really admire about the leadership here is that being a senior leader doesn’t mean you know all the information. In fact, you probably now know a lot less than the people who work for you. Best of all, these are incredibly intelligent individuals, and they see things through a different lens, so they help us think differently.
For more information about Haus, listen to our conversation in episode three from the Tech Whisperers podcast.
