Saving the House on Fire, From CEO to Board Member
How does one step from being a corporate executive to serving on boards? Joe Alvarado has succeeded in finding his way to executing plans to leading internal change. One of the reasons that Joe believes Latinos lacked in the steel industry was the fact that they were not available to work on rotations and didn’t live with the flexibility to be moving between cities. As Latinos we usually put our family first and feel limited when it comes to making decisions. Joe decided to do things differently and take all the promotions and rotations he was offered in order to gain different experiences.
“I was very fortunate to have lots of work opportunity to develop skills,” Joe states. The former Chairman, President and CEO of Commercial Metals Company, expresses how one of his best lessons he had when moving up throughout his career was the exposure to all his directors. “I had good exposure to what it is expected of board members and the relationship they have with directors.”
Joe was encouraged by his director of the time to consider the opportunity to serve on a board. He then decided to join Spectra Energy, his first board ever to serve. He describes his experience as a learning moment for his own role as management. It was in this first board where he learned more about things such as how to run meetings or implementing different practices. It was all about getting exposure to how other people ran businesses. Joe has seen boards change throughout the years. He was joining boards where he inherited practices that he might of not believed in and was exposed to the changing expectations of not only shareholders but of banks and accountants. “20 years ago directors would be picked by a chairman. They were usually handpicked but then things started to change.”, he says. These changes brought new practices for the selection of directors such as the selection of women.
We all hear the cry for diversity on board rooms. This cry “has grown even stronger as a result of social actions and failures of our society”, expresses Joe. He states how today there are two priorities for companies: operations and agenda. Especially now with the effects of COVID-19 and our current political climate, Joe describes how boards are building new committees such as an advocacy committee, which carries both an internal and external component. “There are key critical components of how we influence policy and decision making in an organization. We have to be mindful that we haven’t given the priority of diversity and inclusion,” Joe says.
“There is a changing face in America that is more colorful that what has been in the past,” Joe explains. He pushes the fact that the weakness of companies comes when the workforce and management does not look like the other side of the equation, being the customers and suppliers. It then creates such disconnection.
Before the current social movements and the global pandemic we’re currently living in, Joe described all efforts as just leaving things as how they were. Today, Joe describes his work with CEO’s who have been risen to unseen challenges and seeing them doing it really well. There’s been a broad range of what has been happening internally to companies and every CEO has had to react differently. He describes his boards as always having a good balance of operations, governance and financial. “I can assure that in each of boards that I serve we do talk about taking inclusive decisions.”
What does the company of the future look like? We all might have our visions and it most definitely looks more diverse but Joe also wants companies to realize that the house is on fire and that it is urgent companies look internally first to survive. One of the first steps companies should be taking is opening the pipeline and realizing the talent coming from different groups of people. “I have an obligation today to represent latinos and other people of color who are underrepresented.” Joe knows that this will all be a slow change but Corporate America should take advantage of all the people they can add for value, from the lowest to highest levels.