April 11, 2024
Jeff Jones, President & CEO, H&R Block
Uber Yourself Before You Get Kodaked – The Outsider Who Turned Around H & R Block
Listen on:
When you hear about a public company going through six CEOs, you may think “they are doomed!” Not so when you bring in an outsider who was the President of Uber, and focused in on rebooting the culture first—rather than deploying the typical rinse and repeat “transformation” consulting playbook.
H&R Block has been on a rocky rollercoaster ride over the decades—occasionally coming close to the brink of obscurity, irrelevance, and decline. More than a cultural shift, this $3.5B behemoth, with 60,000 tax pros in 10,000 locations who have prepared close to 100 million returns, required industrial strength turnaround leadership.
Their CEO Jeff Jones, a grounded, humble and agile leader, brought that strength to the company. He joined us for this episode of The Reboot Chronicles to unpack dozens of Reboot Lessons, with remarkable stories about how he shifted H&R Block from a command and control to a connected culture, why 5 million people switched over to their rebooted platform—and why he resigned as Uber’s President during its darkest days.
Creating A Connected Culture
When Jeff joined H&R Block in 2017 he came in with a level of commitment that the company was not familiar with. The company had seen a decade of unremarkable management, and employees didn’t have faith that Jeff was going to be any different. He even tells a story of how one of his employees early on told Jeff, “I have outlasted the other CEOs and I will outlast you too.” So not only did he have to grow the company he also had to “create a sense of long-term decision making, stability and risk taking”. Changing the company from a culture of just trying to survive, to working with one another to regain market leadership, is what organizations need now.
Value Your Values
If you are not familiar with the beginnings of Uber, there are articles and documentaries that cover their dark days. Jeff found himself as President of a rocket ship that developed ethical issues. Even though the “kind of generational wealth of what was possible in that job at that company before it was public was very intoxicating.” as Jeff puts it. By making that decision to leave at that moment, which hindsight will tell us was smart, he learned the “value of his values”. Walking away from the Uber cash machine, was probably tough, but he learned what he stood for, and didn’t let corporate greed and corruption get the better of him.
The Most Powerful Tool In Your Arsenal
Other nuggets Jeff shared for people to prepare themselves for todays economy and work/career tracks is hybrid life-long learning—even just learning how to be a good communicator. It is a two-sided coin of knowing how to connect to other people, and how to listen to other people. It will carry you infinitely farther than trying to do it alone and along the way you learn even more from the people you are communicating with. The positive impacts with coworkers and organizational reboot progress can be powerful.
