ActOne Group Founder Janice Bryant Howroyd: Never Compromise Your Values in a Quest to Succeed

0:00This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 % of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier, so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new.

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1:09Welcome to Harvard Business Review's The New World of Work. I'm Adi Ignatius, the Editor-in-Chief of Harvard Business Review. And each week on this show, I interview a business leader about the challenges that he or she are facing in the workplace and how they see the world of work evolving. So we have a great guest this week. Before I bring her on, though, let's hear from our sponsor, Unisys. Where some see barriers, Unisys sees breakthroughs. Unisys pushes what's possible across digital workplace, app modernization, cloud, and beyond. Unisys, keep breaking through. Now, also, before we start, I want to do a quick plug for our flagship podcast called IdeaCast.

1:51You can get that wherever you get your shows. If you'd like shows like this, IdeaCast is the same thing. It's an interview with somebody with interesting ideas in the world of business. I also want to tout, we have a big live virtual event on March 6th called the Future of Business. So be sure to go to hbr.org slash future of business to learn more and to register. We will also put a registration link in the chat. Also, if you have questions for our guest today, put those in the chat too. And now it's my pleasure to introduce her. So my guest today is Janice Bryant Howroyd. She's the founder and CEO of the Act One Group, a large and innovative global employment and management company.

2:40Howroyd, who founded the organization 45 years ago, has made the top 40 in Forbes' most recent list of the wealthiest self-made women in the US. She's the author of a couple of books, including most recently, Acting Up, Winning in Business and Life, Using Down Home Wisdom. Welcome, Janice, to the new world of work. Hey, Adi. It's great to be here. Well, I'm really glad to have you on the show, and there's a lot to talk about. We have a global audience, and not everyone knows you and knows your story, so I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about how you started the business. Well, although officially I began Act One Group in 1978, I believe I went into a business frame of mind my 11th grade year in high school.

3:31This is actually paradoxical because I never dreamed of being an entrepreneur in those early days of life. I didn't see many entrepreneurs. I saw store owners who certainly were entrepreneurial, but neither did I think about owning a professional services organization. I just didn't think that was likely. Yet, Adi, the seeds of impetus were planted for me that year. It was one of the most outstanding years of my life in a positive outcome way, but a very negative experience. All right. We'll keep going. I'm interested when you talk about the negative experience. I'm interested to then fast forward to how you got to build up this big global company.

4:15Well, most people who know me know that I'm a southern girl, southern United States, and I was born into a segregated society. Our hometown was small. It was an early founded town in this nation in the late 1700s. And in many ways, it retained a lot of the ideologies and ideas about how life should work that it had back then. And so, yeah, it was a very nurturing community that I lived in. And so around my 11th grade here, the United States government put into place initiatives that basically. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think, you know, a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new.

5:02It can help you with practically anything on the Web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18+. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners. Sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra.

5:35Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 % of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com. Unless you integrate the schools, you'll lose funding. And our town's attempt at integration in the first years of it was to select some of the higher performing students from my side of town to go over to the white school. And our community determined that some of the smarter kids would be the ones who did that, both out of a sense of pride, but also to show white people that their schools wouldn't just fall apart because we were too dumb to learn.

6:21It was a horrible year for me. I had the experience in my U.S. history class of having a young man who was teaching stand up on his desk and proceed to talk about why slavery was appropriate. And black people, which he didn't refer to us with that term, were appropriate to the slave implantation life. I bit the incise of my mouth and you may be able to see that even today, I still have some residual effect from that. And I just prayed to God, don't let me cry in front of all these people and I'll never come back. When I got home and I shared my experience with my dad, he began then to teach me about the importance of knowing myself and that I had everything I need to be everything I need to be.

7:08And so he gave me choices, one of which was to not go back to the school. And let's just say I went back and it if it didn't frame, it certainly informed so much of my following adulthood. So by the time I came to California to visit my sister on a vacation, some might say I'm still on that vacation. I was this this this kaleidoscopic hope with a lot of edgier experience than I would have thought I wanted. And it also, though, that experience helped to inform me on how people want to be treated and that everything you say matters. And that's built into the culture of how I started the company, which, by the way, was started in the front of a rug shop with a very good address.

8:03So that is, you know, at once a troubling story and an inspiring story. So, you know, thank you for sharing that. Let's talk a little bit more about that, because you you have succeeded in the business world, which certainly, you know, as you've grown the business and today, really, you know, is probably dominated still by white males. You know, you've talked, I've read your book, you know, you talk openly about making it as a woman, making it as an African-American woman. So I'd love to hear you talk a little bit more about the barriers you've had to overcome in the business world, trying to establish yourself, you know, in a world that maybe was sometimes hostile to you.

8:44Well, you know, I do almost always, I do talk about prevailing in business and the journey needs that that requires. Now, in the early days, the journeys were supported by my family, and many of them still are a part of the company. Later, post our tech revolution with Acceleration, our workforce technology suite, growth introduced me to NGOs that have been tremendous in networking into companies and executives who have appetites, disciplines, and knowledge to bury a break. So these include, and they're not limited to, organizations like Weaving, NMSDC, NUDC, WPO, and NGLCC. Now, there have been nights before I joined those organizations and began to benefit from the work they do, many years of being in business, when I told myself it just wasn't worth the pain and pressure, but there's never been a morning I didn't awaken on purpose.

9:50Interestingly, during the... This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners, sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 % of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier, so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome?

10:28That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus. Early years between 2012 and 2016, it seemed as though in the U.S. specifically, inclusion was mapped as an objective for almost all companies, regardless of their size of industry. Within these later years, there appears to be a burgeoning marketing and branding for DE and I that the efforts, in effect, just are blurring around.

11:17I don't know if this is from weariness or retreats to bottom line or fears of exposure, but there's a lot of work left to do here. And so certainly for me, race has mattered and gender has mattered. But if I bring you up to speed on what matters for me, size matters. We're not a small company by designation. We operate in 34 countries and our technology speak in over 50 languages. However, we're not an enterprise sized one. So we deliver enterprise level services, but some procurement agents don't know our sector well enough to realize that, like with a bank, Customers don't borrow nor withdraw all on the same day.

12:05And unlike a bank, when emergencies do arrive, Act One can pivot decision-made. Even we aggregate a lot, you know, immediately. We do these things immediately. And so we're also closer to talent markets than they trust us to be. We're working globally. We affect locally. We engage locally. And several of our clients, who are the largest in the world in their markets, I might add, Adi, have realized this and they benefit from it greatly, not only in talent delivery circumstances, importantly, in times of data risks and other circumstances such as COVID we've just lived through. But unfortunately, many decision makers and potential client companies retain some outdated, possibly never true ideas about who can do what.

12:58And the burden of competing in these environments is heavy, and it's often ridiculous. Yeah, that's all really interesting. There's a lot to come back to there. If you just joined us, I'm speaking with the founder and CEO of the Act One Group, Janice Bryant-Halroyd. And if you have questions for her about any of the things we're talking about, please put them in the chat and I'll try to get to them later. So you talked about DEI. I don't want to just talk about DEI issues. But before we move off that topic, you know, you started to talk a little bit about this moment. And I want to go a little bit deeper with that.

13:36whether, you know, so this is a moment and HBR's coverage reflects that where certainly in the U.S. companies are trying to make progress where they've been talking and achieving very little over the years. Like this is a moment to get it right. And their employees are like, you got to get it right. You can't just sort of talk the talk now. From your perspective and you both as a business leader, but also in the employment sector, are you encouraged by the progress or frustrated that there isn't more? I'm sure you've seen cycles where these issues rose to the forefront only to kind of dissipate depending on what the economy is doing.

14:14So how are you feeling right now about the extent to which companies are or are not making progress on DE &I? Well, first of all, let's go back a little bit. You talked about getting it right. That kind of depends on what right is. I don't mean to sound like Bill Clinton with That depends on what is is. In this instance, it is appropriate to ask that. For many companies, getting it right is simply about bottom line. And then they'll do the things if they happen to support that. And that's appropriate. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new.

14:55It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18+. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners. Sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra.

15:27Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 % of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier, so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com. In some spaces, but the bottom line can have a hard and immediate return. It can also have a soft and long return. So if you're talking about getting it right around D, E, and I, diversity, equity, and inclusion, that can be a rub for some companies while an encouragement for others. There's a bit of both. Encouragement that population swell will through democratic and capitalist processes, demand change.

16:13Yeah, I'm encouraged that will happen. Then supply and demand kick in. Frustration is a different word than I use in countering that, though, because let's think about it this way. Rather, disappointment that love is such a puzzle for people who individually all want the same things. The promise of democratic constitutions. These are promises we make. We don't learn from history, I think, Adi, sometimes enough. even with the evidence of ages. So we experience the war of have and have not to exhaustion in our daily lives. And we're losing threads of sanity that teaches us together we win. Think about this.

17:04When COVID first became a community fear, I gave the call to my global organization that we will not simply go through this. We will grow through this. And we did. Just as countries like the United States, Germany, France, and the UK have done from war years before. Did we need those war years to grow, though? Did we need them to innovate or to unite? Do we as human beings require danger to recognize our commonalities are strong and beautiful. I'm not wanting to be a Pollyanna here, but I can tell you, Adi, that my faith has taught me as strongly as my experience does. We're going to be good. We just have to work through it, and we have to make sure we're working from some of the same definitions.

17:58Technology is a tremendous enabler for us to take advantage of that and not simply use it to speak from uninformed platforms. Yeah, that's great. So Janice, then, you know, for, for, for, you know, what would be your advice then for women of color who want to have the kind of success you've had, you know, what, what would your advice be for the, the, the approaches or the, the, the paths that people might take? Well, you know, often women ask me post-speaking engagements or even during work in industry community events, especially on university campuses, how they can become like me. And I'm always floored by that because I carry a lot of my history with me and being like me wasn't something I wanted to be.

18:49Yet I realized and respect that they're talking about who they see today and how I present in a public and business forum. So my response to them is, do you learn from my experiences, which I openly sometimes too transparently share? And they're shared in my books, as you mentioned, in my Ask JBA's website and socials. But specifically to the question of what I tell these women, it's the same thing I tell men. whether they are younger women, younger men, humans of any age or gender, never compromise who you are personally to become who you wish to be professionally. Now, compromise is key to growth when it comes to contracting business.

19:37And I think it's detrimental when it comes to selling your values and your... This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. This episode is brought to you by Palmolive.

20:14Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners. sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use Palmolive Ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9 % of grease, leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier, so you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com. Or for business. This may sound simple, Adi, But as I teach, simple is not always easy. There are footnotes I make to women. None of them should have to feel the need to subjugate their intelligence or their presence in the manner I've had to over the course of leading my company.

21:02And my brother, during some of our presentations, would kick me under the table and tell me that, you know, I needed to quiet down a little bit. Very much similar to when Michelle Obama was on the campaign trail, their first season of campaigning for presidency, and people were getting adjusted to this different kind of cultural energy she brought forward with her passion and intelligence. Or, Adi, I've had circumstances where I would text answers to white men in my organization during presentations and gift them with the solutions and the data that was in my head. Giving consultation as proof of ability versus being able to bill for it as a service with companies.

21:51All of these things that are footnotes to the young women who I'm talking with. And I also encourage them, they don't have to compromise who they are personally to be who they wish to be professionally. They simply need to be very in tune and iteratively understanding who they are personally in order that they can bring that forward with a sense of humility as well as authority. Yeah, that's very well stated. Thank you for that. I want to shift gears a little bit. So, you know, Act One Group is an employment services company, so you must have a window, sort of an aggregated window on what's happening on the economy.

22:36I'd love your thoughts, maybe from the data that you've aggregated on, you know, to what extent do you see the, you know, the world of work, the world of employment evolving in one way or another? Oh, thank you. And let's be really clear about that. Employment services is a key and prized part of what Act One Group offers. However, we are a workforce solutions group delivering what we call TTP, which is talent, technology, and processes to companies of various sizes, scales, and disciplines. So given this, Adi, we do have a clear window to how work and employment are evolving. Now, some smart companies are using this time to invest in attracting new talent, as opposed to simply trying to conserve human capital expense.

23:2774 % of the companies in the United States are still talking about expanding their workforce. And we get to see this as an evolution in how our clients are utilizing their own internal fulfillment teams. They're running leaner with their full-time recruiting assets and using flexible models with staffing partners to meet their hiring needs. This is engaging shared accountability structures for them. It's making them more flexible with brand investment, and they're able to place more emphasis on the cost of talent and the benefits and incentives associated with it. AI is a real and strong thing in ways that both threaten and support the workforce.

24:13And, you know, it's an exotic occurrence, I think, that's happening in that companies are requiring re-skilled and up-skilled people to deliver work at the same time that they are relenting on four-year degrees in other areas. Soft skills are big, big considerations for companies, especially companies where leadership remains over the millennial age group, I would say, and in companies where multinational cultures intersect. We see this as well. Now, think about this. Obviously, there is a continued insistence on workers wanting to work remotely, despite company policies that are starting to require them to return with regularity.

25:02And we see this in the news each day, don't we? Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, certainly the huge layoffs in the tech industry, right? And they've softened that stance somewhat, but it still remains. So we're going to see a continuing demand for gig work versus the typical 40-hour work week. And the trend will only continue to grow, especially as new workers enter the age space for personal financial responsibility. Here's something, though, that I think is really important to your point. The economy and reality or not of a recession certainly has some companies, ours included, poised for growth through difficult times, but also playing it conservatively in times of hiring new headcount.

25:54I talked about upskilling and reskilling. Well, those are options that midsize companies are embracing quite aggressively. As a member of an organization called CEO Connection, and I don't know if you're familiar with it, but Kenny Beck is the CEO of this organization, Audion, would be a brilliant guest for you. And I'm sure he will affirm what I marvel at, which is the ingenuity and the social consciences that CEOs of midsize companies have here in the USA alone. Now, across the globe, midsize companies are often aware differently of their local positioning and responsibilities. So they tend to make decisions differently.

26:35I think regardless of company sizes, the importance of contingent workers are going to continue to grow in these evolving times. And this is going to allow companies to flex up and down more easily. It's especially important outside of the U.S. where local laws can make it very difficult to impact headcounts quickly. We like to pivot. We like flexibility. And COVID showed us that that's very important. But the laws and employee awareness in the U.S. are shifting company behaviors and concerns, I think. Audio technology is allowing entrepreneurs and their companies to compete for talent differently and more aggressively than any time before, especially as our markets and governments are looking to learn from what we call the talent space.

27:27And so I think all of these create quite an appealing opportunity. I use the word appealing in quotes for companies to not only rethink and reset, they can revisit where they've actually seen value when it comes to MySpace, which is the workforce community. So we're getting some really good questions that are coming in from our audience. I'm going to turn to one right now. And this is from Sean, who says he's from Tucson, Arizona. And it really picks up on what you were talking about. But but more for your company, how do you stay on the innovative edge when recruiting and hiring and focusing on retention?

28:11Well, I really appreciate that question because it also allows me to talk about how we actually are differentiating ourselves. And, you know, my mama taught my 10 siblings and me that in order to be outstanding, you've got to be willing to stand out. And our dad taught us that together we could win. So we could win with anything that we put our minds to. Well, these early childhood teachings have manifested into how we've designed and iterated our company culture. We stand on our principles of feet. basically feet is freedom to innovate excellence and delivery and because everything and everyone matters invest the time to understand our mantras which i've mentioned to you already uh one of them together we win uh support us as well as workers are the center of our universe so when we think like this it requires us to be bold in the early days of acquiring new clients it requires us to be bold and truthful and keep the commitments we make to people who come into our organization.

29:20So we're beginning our distinction, Adi and Sean in Arizona, with the hiring of our people. The tenure in our company is crazy wonderful. People don't stay with that one group because they're comfortable. They stay with us because they're believed in. They're supported and encouraged to be beyond comfortable. And that requires us to be bold. It requires them to be bold. Now, here's something we do. We set budgets that are reasonable but necessary. And those who exceed those budgets in a dynamic way are recognized for it by their peers and by the company. And one way we do this that everybody enjoys, and in two weeks, I'm going to be hosting the highest achieving team members and their guests, each gets to bring a guest of their choice with them, to what we've named our Founders Club.

30:17This year it's going to be in Cancun, so in two weeks I'll be there. And at the conclusion of our five-day stay, we have an incredible reveal for what the next year's founders will be. And then we allow people to set their own individual budgets approved off by their leadership, and we work with them to achieve that. We chat with them. Certainly, we use technology to help them keep on track and to continuously upskill themselves, but we're also working with them in a very people way. Many executives and other companies have told us that post-COVID, there is no need to continue to invest this additional financial burden the way we do.