100 Days, 3 Lessons

I recently passed the 100-day mark in my role as CEO of Moody's, and it is a time for me to pause and reflect. The past three-plus months have been eventful for everyone, me included. Though vaccinations are thankfully becoming a reality for more of us, the global pandemic continues to take its toll on our health and livelihoods and challenge our colleagues and communities.

These are not my first days at Moody’s; in fact, they represent only about 1% of my 16 years at this company that I am so humbled to lead. Days in the CEO seat are different than any other, and I have tried to make them as meaningful as possible.

I firmly believe in the importance of clarity of direction – and relentlessly communicating that direction. Becoming CEO was an ideal time to amplify the ways we communicate around our purpose, mission, and vision as a company.

I love that Moody’s is a purpose-driven organization. People work here because what we do matters. Our role as a company is to provide knowledge, clarity, and fairness to an interconnected world by sharing trusted insights and standards to help decision-makers act with confidence. 

Over the past quarter, I have witnessed the excitement around our ambition to be the world’s preeminent integrated risk assessment business. Since the beginning of the year, Moody’s has made several key moves aligned with our strategy, including completing acquisitions of Catylist and Cortera, launching DataHub, and growing our ESG Solutions group. Along the way, I held my first global town hall meeting and have spoken with dozens of customers and partners.

There is an urgency across the firm in finding new ways to better serve our customers across a wider range of opportunities, and I believe this creates an exciting future for our company. As I said, CEO days are unlike others. They challenge you to do more, to be more and to learn more. And, as I pause to reflect, three valuable lessons have emerged.  

Lesson 1: Flexibility is an undervalued virtue. 

From makeshift home offices to embracing collaboration tools many of us had never even heard of before, this past year has taught so many of us the importance of flexibility.

It can be difficult to change, especially if you have held one role for a long time. In a new situation, your customers’ needs may change. Your schedule may change. Your colleagues may change. I have learned that you cannot see things through old lenses and impose old models; this day and age requires a flexible mindset that embraces change as a constant. 

It can be a challenge for 100-year-old organizations like Moody’s to be nimble and flexible, yet we have done just that. Over the past 15 months, we have transitioned from forty offices to a distributed workforce of 11,000 individual workspaces. That is flexibility – as is our ability to dynamically adapt to the changing needs of our customers and the market. This is clear in areas like ESG and climate risk, areas where we are making significant investments to serve these evolving needs. In just 100 days, I am seeing great flexibility – in how we organize, synthesize, and share our unparalleled data, research, and expertise.  

Adaptability is a hallmark of both personal growth and the most successful organizations. It is a trait that I am excited to see become a core capability across our organization at Moody’s.

Lesson 2: The best learning comes from listening.  

They say that experience is the best teacher. But even after 16 years with Moody’s, I can happily report that I have continued to learn a great deal about my company and my colleagues simply by actively listening and keeping an open mind about what I might not yet know (again, flexibility!).

Among the things I have learned the past 100 days are the need for effectiveness and efficiency – two common themes that I hear from both our customers and our employees. Earlier this year, I began to have regular meetings with customers in my new capacity as CEO. In almost every meeting, I hear the need for tools and solutions that help organizations become more effective – in concentrating their resources and filtering the signal from the noise – and become more efficient – in leveraging automation and finding cost savings that can be invested elsewhere. I hear this from our people as well, including from our Strategic Fitness Process, which told us that we need to find ways across the company to streamline internal processes and increase automation. As a company, we have also made a concerted effort to listen, learn from, and help one another, which is why we have conducted listening sessions, employee surveys and task forces to help understand how we can address the concerns of our people. Thanks to their feedback, we have instituted several measures, including enhanced collaboration resources, workshops and programs to address professional and personal stress.

I have also learned the value of proactively building listening opportunities into my schedule. From town halls and regular customer calls to hopefully, someday soon, even joining co-workers on a run, I am resolved to continue to create more opportunities to listen and learn from my colleagues.  

Lesson 3: Individuals may be tough, but resilience requires a strong community.  

Over the course of my career at Moody’s, I have often marveled at my colleagues’ skills. We have some of the world’s most innovative and resourceful analysts, researchers, and administrative and technical staff. This past year has tested all 11,000 Moody’s employees across the globe, personally and professionally. But I have learned that no matter how tough you are individually, you are more resilient as part of a community.  

That is why we have tried hard to (again!) listen to what types of support our staff need and to supply some of the tools and resources to help people help themselves, and each other. We have provided programming for our employees around mental wellness. In addition to highlighting the importance of this issue at a global town hall, I recently dedicated one of our bi-weekly update calls with all Managing Directors to this topic. We are now working across the leadership team to find ways to re-prioritize in order to create more capacity for our people with the goal of ensuring we help our people transition into our new way of working during the course of 2021 and take the time off as they need. As I write, we are focused on how we support our colleagues in India in a variety of practical ways as they deal with an increasingly dire situation.  

Additionally, it is critical to support the global Moody’s community. The events of the last year have underscored the importance of a strong commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, both internally and externally. This past year, we launched a range of DE&I initiatives across our company and within the communities where we work, including $2 million in commitments supporting equal justice and educational opportunities. We also made an $11 million contribution to the Moody’s Foundation to advance its work empowering people with the financial knowledge, resources, and confidence they need to reach their potential and create a better future.

It has been quite the 100 days for me personally, for Moody’s and for the world. I am incredibly grateful for the support of everyone at Moody’s and the opportunity they have given me to grow and improve as a leader. There are so many exciting opportunities ahead for us and I look forward to embracing them all with a flexible mindset, an active ear, and a resilient spirit.