Jill Kouri - A CMO in the Trenches
Phil Rowley speaks with Jill Kouri, the chief marketing officer of real estate giant JLL, about her hands-on leadership style, improving gender parity in corporate America and … dirt bikes? They also discuss the changing role of the CMO and JLL’s vision of itself for the coming years—specifically related to the company’s new purpose statement.
TRANSCRIPT
PHIL: 00:06 [music] Welcome to Intelligence That Works. I'm Phil Rowley, executive director and chief revenue officer of global consulting firm BRG. Intelligence That Works is more than the name of this podcast. It's what makes BRG tick. We're questioners, challengers, even truth seekers committed to uncovering the substance beneath the surface of the biggest issues and challenges facing business leaders today. We meet some innovative individuals along the way. And in each episode, I'll speak with one of them about change, leadership, and the possibilities that lie ahead. This podcast, like BRG itself, is about harnessing our collective expertise to deliver inspired insights and practical strategies that help organizations stay ahead of what's next.
In this episode, I have the pleasure of speaking in BRG’s Chicago office with Jill Kouri, CMO for the Americas of JLL. Jill oversees digital marketing, business development, branding, public relations, and internal communications. Jill is also a member of Advancing Women Executives. Jill, thank you for joining me today.
JILL: 01:29 Thanks for having me, Phil. Great to be here.
PHIL: 01:32 Well, I'm going to try and get into about four or five categories, any one of which could probably take up the entire podcast. But for today, I want to tee up: how has the role of the CMO evolved or changed over time. Secondly, the advancement of women in the workplace. And then finally, mentoring and sponsorship, overall, again something that is near and dear to Jill's heart.
Let's start—and just for the audience, some of your background. You were at Accenture for fourteen years. Five years ago, you joined JLL. How did you end up at JLL?
JILL: 02:04 So, Phil, I'll tell you about my journey from Accenture to JLL in a moment. But I want to start by talking about my background, actually, going back to youth. So I grew up in Ohio. And I grew up in a neighborhood that was largely dominated by families with boys. So my entire upbringing was spent coming home from school and playing sports with boys in my neighborhood. And I think that's important as we talk later about the topic of diversity and the fact that I really knew nothing other than: girls can do anything that boys can do. So my after-school hours were dominated by basketball, kickball, baseball, football, any sort of childhood game. And, then later, I raced BMX bikes. It was a new sport that was starting up in my hometown. And again, I saw a lot of my friends who were boys participating, and I wanted to try it as well.
So I think that grounding in having these relationships with boys who were friends was a fantastic precursor to where I ended up in my career. And that was always believing that men and women were on equal ground. And throughout my entire career, so far, I've been in that dynamic where I'm surrounded by marketing executives who are largely women but working closely with men who are internal stakeholders or actual clients. And I think that upbringing of, again, never knowing anything other than equality, at least in my experience, has been extremely beneficial for me as I've parlayed those learnings into a great career at Accenture.
And then a career that changed when JLL came calling. And that was about five-and-a-half, six years ago, at a time when there were some changes at Accenture. One of my key stakeholders was moving into a different role, and that opened my eyes to exploring new opportunities, because I think there's something to be said for the mantra of: people don't leave companies, they leave people.
So that was really just the impetus for me to take a phone call from Jane Curran, who is the head of recruiting at JLL, and I explored the opportunity for months. I knew that there was this other opportunity on the table. And I was able to really compare and contrast my Accenture role to the JLL opportunity. And so I went in fully knowledgeable in my mind about what the benefits would be for me to make a switch at that point in my career.
PHIL: 04:41 Awesome. Starting with the BMX—very, very impressive. The leaving people also is profound. And then that you took that time to really assess what would that mean for you—very, very helpful, I think, for all of us in leadership.
Turning to the role of the CMO and this convergence, really, of what had been a sales discipline versus maybe a marketing, and maybe they were separated; now that there's this confluence, how has that impacted how you lead?
JILL: 05:06 So there's definitely a confluence between marketing and sales, because at the end of the day we're both focused on one thing, and that is the customer. But the role of the CMO has been changing over the years in an extremely meaningful way. And that is really the evolution from where I started my career twenty-five-plus years ago, in more 2D marketing, which was very focused on advertising, media relations, direct mail, trade shows.
And over the last—really the last decade—we've seen the introduction of performance marketing, which is largely grounded than digital marketing. We have to be very nimble and stay up on new trends and opportunities. And things have evolved in a way that sometimes it's a little bit unsettling and scary as a CMO to understand that things are moving at the speed of light. And to really try to wrap your arms around all of the new methods of marketing and these opportunities to stay closer to the customer, to really drive the pipeline, to have a much greater ability to focus on ROI.
Real estate is largely a laggard when it comes to innovation and moving into areas where we've got an opportunity to use best-in-class marketing, from SEO to search engine marketing to paid social to heavy reliance on the power of marketing automation to account-based marketing. All very technology driven through tools and platforms that did not exist largely when I was at Accenture five years ago. They were probably very much in their infancy.
And I think the one thing that I've seen that's extremely different on the people side is that we're employing new roles like data scientists, and heavy focus on project and program managers, and hiring a number of people who have deep analytic skills. This is just a new world. As a marketer trying to build a modern marketing organization at JLL, my view is that marketing should be a strategic driver of growth and not a cost center.
And we're evolving as a marketing organization, but JLL is also evolving as an organization that was heavily focused on relationship building and sales support, but now is moving into a world of product development and really a huge emphasis on technology. At times, our CEO, Christian Ulbrich, has said that he wants JLL to be a technology company that plays in the real estate space. That's hugely aspirational. But that just tells you, again, how this laggard industry is really changing. And it's absolutely incumbent on our marketing organization to evolve as our business is evolving.
PHIL: 08:00 Jill, very powerful there and a lot of incredible takeaways. I think that evolution to a strategic driver of growth is very, very important. And I loved your phrase “performance marketing.” I'm going to capture that and use it myself.
I think the other thing that I took away was your commitment, even at your level and all that you've accomplished, that continued desire to network and to learn from others. I think that's also very profound for the audience. Thank you on that.
JILL: 08:24 I think it's critical.
PHIL: 08:26 If we can, I want to pivot to something I know that's extremely important to you, which is the advancement of women in the workplace. And I'd like to kind of start with—what's your philosophy or your vision? And then maybe we can talk about some specific tactics or strategies that you have deployed.
JILL: 08:44 Well, my philosophy is that we need to do better, right? My observation is that if I look over the past decade, companies are getting much bolder about stating the how we are going to change versus kind of floundering in the why do we need to change. We talked about Accenture earlier, where I had a fantastic career experience, and Julie Sweet, Accenture CEO, has said publicly, very loudly, that Accenture seeks complete gender equity in 2025. So that is absolutely amazing. And in the Fortune 500 company today, I know you probably know this, Phil, we had set a record of thirty-two CEOs. Now, we've dropped down more to twenty-four, twenty-five. And, again, I think that there needs to be an ongoing commitment from companies like Accenture that are making bold statements and commitments to driving change.
PHIL: 09:46 There also is a shortage of board members. What's your thought there if you're speaking to a Fortune 200 or 500 company, what would you say to them about board members?
JILL: 09:55 I would say three things, Phil. First of all, there's overwhelming evidence that returns are better for companies that have diversity on their boards. And I've got a quote from the stock index firm MSCI, which found in a survey last year that organizations with at least three women on the board generated consistently higher returns on equity.
Second point is, I would suggest that boards and executive search firms who do board searches don't use the criteria of: we must have a former CEO or CFO to fill a board seat. That is traditionally a very rich pool for candidates. But let's look at CHROs. Let's look at CMOs. Let's look at CROs as viable recruiting pools.
And third, I would tell them to urge their executive search firms to have a female-first mentality when they are looking for candidates.
PHIL: 10:56 Jill, fantastic. I think your three points are spot on and great takeaways, and similar to when we talked about the why, this idea of the criteria and expanding that pool. And others know the business, and in particular your emphasis on being client-centric and the clients. All the more reason to reach out to a CMO or CHRO. So that's a strong takeaway for me as I think about my company, frankly.
Let me turn to something that you have spoken on previously, which is mentoring. And again, as we're trying to maybe groom some people into some of these positions. There's mentoring. There's a sponsor. The one of things that you've talked about is, it doesn't have to be a woman mentoring a woman. Talk to us about your feelings there?
JILL: 11:39 So, first of all, I think mentoring happens on both an informal and formal basis. So informally, one of my philosophies is really to make myself accessible to the broader organization. I want to be someone who is in the trenches talking to individuals at every level of the organization. It might be career navigation. It might be work-life balance. One of the ways I do, that is on a quarterly basis, I block two to three hours in a row and have an open-office hour session. It's been a great way to really learn what's on the minds of individuals, again, at every level in the organization, and has also allowed for opportunities for follow-up conversations when people may need more personal mentoring or coaching.
And it might not always be me doing the mentoring. But during one of the fifteen-minute conversations, we may surface something, and then I will match that individual with the right person from our learning and development organization or another senior leader in the marketing organization.
We've also started a program called the Marketing Leadership Development Program at JLL. And that program is a six-month program that usually has about thirty to forty participants, again, ten from each level within the organization. That allows them to work on an action learning project, but also allows them access to senior leaders within the organization both from a business perspective and a marketing perspective. And we've seen great advancement from individuals who have gone through this Marketing Leadership Development Program, both in career growth opportunities and just general personal and professional advancement. It is imperative for organizations to have the right mindset and philosophy for informal mentoring to occur. And then also, the formation of formal programs just to make it something that's part of the DNA.
PHIL: 13:40 I love the open office idea, especially if someone would have access to you at your level. That's very, very cool. And I agree that informal and the formal—and there has to be that type of balance. And I like the concept of the ally. I have not heard that before. That's really neat.
I want to finish more on leadership, because throughout everything you've been talking about is a thread of leadership. You've referenced several leaders with whom you've enjoyed working. Talk to us on your thinking on leadership. It definitely has evolved. It's not autocratic. What is it to be a good leader?
JILL: 14:15 At the end of the day, being nice and transparent and open and honest. That's the only style I've ever known. Those are guiding principles that are very core to who I am and what I believe. And this authoritarian style or autocratic style that I have experienced in the past, I don't think it's tolerated anymore. I think that people want to work with nice, good, honest, authentic people.
One of the people that I take a lot of guidance from—and I love her podcasts, and I just watched her recent Netflix show—is Brené Brown. And she talks about the power of transparency and authenticity. And I might be sometimes a leader who tends to overshare or share things prematurely, but I'd rather, I think, be able to course correct from that than to be someone who is closed off and subversive, maybe too close to the vest on everything, and be that person that's just more open and accessible to the organization and both within marketing and the rest of the organization.
So it's fairly simple. I just think that we're all human beings at the end of the day, and people don't have a right to manage by fear. And while I did work with someone who definitely employed that style, I got a little bit stronger, maybe I toughened up a bit, but I saw people around me ending their days in tears and actually leaving the organization. And I think that is absolutely not what anyone wants to see in a leader nowadays.
PHIL: 16:08 Jill, very insightful in individual leadership. I know that you have been in JLL actively involved in a purpose statement. Talk about leadership in the context of a firm.
JILL: 16:18 Defining our purpose statement is something that's very important to us at JLL. And off the back of a recent leadership retreat that our global CEO Christian Ulbrich hosted at Stanford this summer, which I was really thrilled to be a part of, we started talking more as a leadership team, and at our global executive board level, around the crystallization of so many things that JLL is doing to better define our vision and our mission. And we brought all of that work very recently into a new JLL purpose statement, which is really the acting North Star that guides everyone in the organization.
We've recently rolled that out and it's as simple as this: we shape the future of real estate for a better world. It's simple. It's straightforward. It's high school English. It rolls off the tongue. But it's extremely meaningful.
It's really a manifestation of many other things that JLL has been focused on for many years. We've got a huge sustainability initiative, which is headlined under the banner of “building a better tomorrow.” Our brand promise is all about helping our clients and our people achieve their ambitions. And what we're doing is bringing together all of the amazing things we've been doing from a corporate social responsibility perspective, a technology perspective, an environmental perspective, and helping all of that data anchor this master purpose statement, again, around shaping the future of real estate for a better world.
PHIL: 17:54 Very profound. Jill, again, thank you so much for your time and some very powerful takeaways for the audience. I am going to use performance marketing going forward. Thank you for offering that to me.
But, of course, more importantly, you talked about the “why” and what that really means. You also talked about criteria and how we think about people and potential talent. And then this idea of integration. Thank you so much for sharing some of the tactics that you've actually employed to make that happen. So, Jill, thank you again.
JILL: 18:25 Thank you, Phil. It was great to be here.
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PHIL: 18:28 This podcast is brought to you by BRG. You can find episodes wherever you get your podcast or on our website, thinkbrg.com. And please don't forget to give us a review on iTunes. I'm Phil Rowley, thanks for listening.
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, position, or policy of BRG, its employees, or affiliates.