Chief Change Officer - Greg Morley: Turning DEI Drama into Workplace Wins – Part One

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

Greg Morley isn’t your average HR guy. He’s the former DEI and HR head at Moët Hennessy, Disney, and Hasbro—and the brains behind Bond, the book on belonging your workplace desperately needs. In Part 1 of this two-part series, Greg spills how to ditch boring corporate jargon and actually create cultures where people feel seen, heard, and ready to crush it. From rewiring outdated systems to tackling bias head-on, Greg brings humor, grit, and a whole lot of wisdom. Oh, and he’ll show you why making your team feel like they belong isn’t just “nice”—it’s how you win. Key Highlights of Our Interview: The Inspiration Behind the Book “The idea for my first book, Bond, came from a friend’s suggestion that I had an obligation to share my experiences. That idea sparked a journey to explore what it takes for any organization to create a true sense of belonging.” Cutting Through the Noise “In a world polarized by amplified voices on the extremes—whether labeled woke or anti-woke—my focus is on the middle ground. Most people want to feel safe, heard, and valued at work, free from political distractions.” A Sandwich Approach to DEI “Balancing a top-down strategy with grassroots alignment ensures each Maison retains its uniqueness while embracing broader organizational values to drive meaningful DEI outcomes.” Facing the First Challenge: Self-Awareness “The journey began with unconscious bias training for all employees, helping them recognize unintentional biases shaped by upbringing or experience. This laid the groundwork for open, honest conversations about diversity and inclusion.” Leadership Advocacy is Key “There’s nothing more powerful than a CEO advocating for DEI consistently. A strong top-down message, combined with grassroots energy, creates the momentum needed for real change.” _________________________ Connect with us: Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Greg Morley Chief Change Officer: Make Change Ambitiously. Experiential Human Intelligence for Growth Progressives Global Top 3% Podcast on Listen Notes World's #1 Career Podcast on Apple Top 1: US, CA, MX, IE, HU, AT, CH, FI, JP 2.5+ Millions Downloads 80+ Countries

Hi everyone, welcome to our show Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist community for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. In this episode, I've got a special trip for you. Today, we are joined by Greg Morley, a leader in the world of human resources and a master of diversity, equity, and inclusion at Monat Tennessee, one of the oldest and largest wine and spirits conglomerates in the world. Gregg has an amazing story to share, covering the unique experiences that have shaped his leadership style and his strategic approach to DEI.

Let's explore what we'll uncover today with Greg. First, we'll discover how his early days handling customer complaints at core centers helped him develop empathy, quick thinking, and communication skills that became the cornerstone of his leadership at Disley, Hasbro, and now Monat, Tennessee. Next, as we dive into advancing the DEI agenda at Monat, Tennessee, Greg will share how he's been listening intently to the people who embody the heart and soul of the group's businesses, fostering an inclusive culture that's grounded in reality. In our third segment, we'll dive into the complexities of managing DEI across Monat Tendencies diverse array

of brands. Greg will explain how he tailors the DEI strategies to respect and reflect each brand's unique identity, while aligning with the group's overarching corporate values. Lastly, we certainly can overlook Greg's upcoming book, Bond, where he shares invaluable lessons on building meaningful connections, not just within the workplace, but in our

everyday lives. It's about fostering a sense of true belonging and deeper inclusion everywhere. So if you are eager to learn how to make your own laws of change, and hear from one of the leading voices in human transformation today, you're in the right place. Let's get started. Thank you, Vince. We had the opportunity to meet at an out-leadership event in Hong Kong during the Hong Kong Gay Games. So I'm really happy we finally made it happen.

Welcome! I'm very excited to have you on board. You're in the People Function with a specific focus on DEI. Can you talk about how your early career experiences shape what you do today? What did you learn back then that still has implications and relevance for you being a people leader with a change in Abellman mandate? Maybe I can start there as a place to introduce myself. So while I recently relocated to Paris, working for Moet Hennessy, which is the leading luxury wines and spirits company in the world, part of the LVMH group.

I spent prior to that 17 years in Hong Kong with Moet Hennessy, with Hasbro, and before that Disney, which is the reason I ended up in Hong Kong. And I was very pleased to be part of the original organizing committee of the Hong Kong Gay Games, which was the first time Gay Games had come to Asia. And it turned out to be a huge success, with great support from participants and an amazing team of volunteers that made it happen. I'm originally an American, still an American,

but become a bit more of an internationalist, I think during my career and I've now worked outside the U S longer than I worked in the U S and way back when started my career in a commercial sales and marketing and distribution world, which was a great platform for me to spend them a good bit of my life in HR, in diversity and inclusion, and now on the verge of publishing a book that I've been writing, which I'm quite excited about. You have been in the people function, in the HR function for long, but then you

were in the commercial world for like eight years. But tell us more about your transformation or how your commercial experience prepare you going into the HR area. Good foundation and good question. The first professional job I had was working in a call center. And there's nothing like working in a call center to prepare yourself to be a good communicator.

80% of the incoming calls were complaints. And so you really had to be able to think quickly and help people solve problems. When I was in high school and in university during the summer, I used to work in a warehouse, pulling orders and preparing orders. to work in a warehouse, pulling orders and preparing orders. And then after my graduation and my call center experience, I worked in an outside sales role for GE, General Electric Company, in different roles. Why is that very critical to my life now is that I understand things like a supply chain from the very basis of it in a warehouse.

I understand what people who work for the companies I work with, when they're trying to handle customer complaints, customer solutions, I understand what it looks like to be a sales rep with targets and, and pressure from your boss about getting things done and sold. So those things were helpful to me and I continue to have an appreciation for those people. I'd like to be out with those team members, even doing my current role in diversity, equity, inclusion, and certainly within HR, because those

people, those individuals are the ones that make the business come to life and make the business alive and are basically the client for HR and DE&I. So I love that part of the business and the energy there. And I feel like I understand it from working in the summer in a hot warehouse in less than ideal conditions, but that's where work happens. You come from the client-facing and operational side.

In your experience, how important is it for people leaders to work closely with other leaders like CFOs and CEOs? Can you share with us how this chemistry, this teamwork impacts the success of a modern day company? The most savvy leaders of people are those that know how to work with an HR team or with their HR partner. I've worked for a number of individuals who quite rightly said to me, on my right hand is my CFO and on my left hand is my CHRO. And that's the way I run my organization

because most organizations are fundamentally made up of people who then work with teams who deliver the business. So the business is an outcome of having a great team and great leadership. And so smart people, leaders, smart organization leaders know that it's important, for example, you talk about the HR people, potentially not knowing the business is to bring a new HR person and say, Hey, let me tell you about my business, let me tell you what we're trying to achieve here.

Let me tell you about, you know, what successful profiles look like in this business or not. And that's where a good HR person can come in and help that leader think about what's the change or what's the profile that is going to accelerate their business. If I think about when I've had conversations with leaders and they've struggled to build enough competence in their organization or enough depth in their organization to have real success, that's a partnership that we could have

together where I can help them. Again, the business is being driven there, not by HR. HR does play certain roles in an organization, certain control roles, certain investment roles, development roles, hiring roles. All of those are part of creating a dynamic, resilient, evolving organization. And I think the best partnerships are those like I explained when a senior leader can say, on my right hand is one function, but on my other is HR.

Throughout your career life, you've been involved in the DEI efforts at different points in time. Now, at Monat Tennessee, have your approaches to DEI changed over the years? Are there any big lessons you pick up along the way? Sure. If I think about my experience within diversity, equity, and inclusion, even that has changed since I was first involved with diversity in Disney, say 20 years ago, and then leading it for a while at Hasbro, and then of course, leading it within my most recent experience in Moat Hennessey.

I would say that my experience was one of learning from my own failures in the past in this space, also trying to diagnose over time why in the organizations I worked and in other organizations where we, we had really not made significant progress over such a long period of time on something that's so fundamental to the business and I'd start with why is it fundamental to the business in any business, it's fundamental that your organization understands the consumer, the end user, the client, and that understanding, I think, comes mainly

through the people who are on the front line of the organization working with those clients, consumers. It comes from the people who work in the research part of the organization. It comes from the leaders who are reflective of the markets in which we work. So representation is critical. And then making sure that when we have a representative company, that people can be fully participating

and heard and work in a safe space and really be adding value to the organization. So those things are part of how I sort of, when we started to kick off this effort four years ago in Moat Hennessy, thinking about, okay, how do we get started? And one of the things that I recognized from my experience and again, some of my failures, is you really have to start with the end in mind. So what was it as an organization we were trying to impact positively by becoming more diverse, more inclusive and more equitable?

And for us it was creating an organization that was more reflective of our consumers and customers so that we could make sure that as we were growing the business that was able to scale up because we understand better the consumer and the customer and that we create more of a reason to be in the company. So one could take two different approaches. One could immediately go out and start saying, okay, I want every profile of every recruitment to have a diverse candidate slate. That's an approach. Which we did some of that in some organizations that other work, the other

way to go is let's rewire the system. And so we took very much, I would say a rewire the system. I mean, making sure that the processes, policies, structures in the organization were prepared to post a more diverse and inclusive workforce. So things like making sure we had domestic partner policies, making sure that we had a relatively clean hiring process that was as free as possible of bias. Making sure that when we were selecting people for development opportunities, it was clean hiring process that was as free as possible of bias, making sure that when we were selecting people for development opportunities,

it was done in a equitable way, not in a way that maybe there was some bias or unconscious bias. And then making sure that our communication to the whole organization was consistent and thorough about what was happening. Then over time, we started to see impact in certain metrics. The other thing that was critically important

in this success story, which is still being written, is to make sure that we had senior leadership, not just supporting, but advocating. There's nothing more powerful than the CEO saying something's important and saying it over and over and over for the rest of the organization to think that must be important if he keeps saying that. And that created, I would say, a bit of a sandwich, which was we had this top direction from the top, voice at the top, sort of passionate way of speaking of diversity and inclusion. And then we were firing up the organization so you had a bit of a grassroots energy as well.

In advancing the DEI agenda, can you describe the initial challenges and strategies your firm faced? How did you begin to tackle issues like, for example, unconscious bias and change company policies to be more tickly inclusive, rather than using DEI simply as part of corporate branding jargon? I think the first challenge was in a way rewiring the way people thought about themselves. So on the surface, if you ask somebody, do you discriminate? I would say 99% of people are going to say, of course, I don't discriminate. I have an equal view to everybody on my team. I'm open. I'm accessible. So the way we started was we took every employee through an unconscious bias

train and that gave people a sense of, Oh, maybe I do have some bias. It may not be intentional, but it could be for whatever reason, where I was raised, it could be through experience. So that allowed us to create a create the first rewiring, which was everybody having a better understanding of themselves. And it also opened the door for people to be having conversations about bias, about diversity, about inclusion. I'm at a very early stage. And I would say, then we moved about inclusion at a very early stage. And I would say then we moved to the next level, which was like, okay, how are we going to make sure

that our policies, processes, and procedures are at least contemporary, maybe progressive? We went to the next step, which was to open the door and train employees to be able to start employee resource groups. We also then went to the stage of starting to put some measurement in place, measurement around representation, measurement about employees' sense of well-being, measurement around employees' sense of inclusion in the organization. sense of inclusion in the organization.

Certainly it had to be reinforced by communication and a sense of what was our message internally and externally and how are we going to amplify that. So each one of those pieces was a kind of change management agenda, which continue to this day, although we've now pivoted more towards speaking specifically to the topics of representation, inclusion and leadership. And those things that were the rewiring are really embedded. If I think about the kind of benefit things we were working on four years ago versus what we're working on now, the landscapes changed, hugely impacted by COVID and people's expectation of the organization and the organization's expectation of people. But a lot of those fundamental early pillars still exist and are still part of the constant rewiring. There's

for sure constantly change. Monet Tennessee is a diverse group with brands all over the world. Given this depth and breadth, diversity becomes a source of complexity. I can imagine that in such a multicultural, multi-layered enterprise. You must respect each brand's uniqueness while maintaining alignment with the firm's overall values. How do you tailor the DEI initiatives to manage this complexity? Great question and one I could probably speak with you on for hours, but let me try to condense it. One benefit for us as an organization, when I say we're the leader in luxury wines and spirits, is from the business perspective, we know what our place is.

And there's, wines and spirits is a huge category globally. And we very much play in the luxury, maybe more select area of the market. Now that being said, if you go from spirits to champagne, to wines, to the other products and Maisons we have in the organization, it's a complex culture. On the surface, you can imagine there's the culture of, I work in France, so I deal with French culture, or I work in Hong Kong and I'm dealing with Hong Kong culture, or I work in Argentina and I deal with Argentinian culture. So there's that cultural element.

Then there's the layered on cultural element of our different Maisons and where they're from. We have some Maisons that are French, some Maisons that are in the US, India, China, around the world. So that puts a different sort of cultural complexity on the work. And then there's another element of what I would say, which is sort of the maturity of the business. So when I was talking with you about visiting a Maison, I was visiting specifically the Hennessy Maison.

Now Hennessy is the largest Maison we have in Moet Hennessy, and it's the third largest Maison within all of the LVH Group. So it's a huge part of the business, and it has an incredibly diverse consumer. The consumers of Hennessy and China are very different than the consumers of Hennessy in say North America or the UK. So from the perspective of knowing the consumer, we know that Hennessy

is a very diverse consumer around the world. When you go back to where it came from, which is Cognac, France, which is in the southwestern part of France, this is not a very diverse part of the world. It's a relatively small community where people know each other. And even within our facility in Hennessy, oftentimes you have people who have worked in the organization for many decades. And maybe their parents worked in that same role they have, and maybe their

grandparents worked in that role. So diversity in Cognac, France looks very different than what we would say of diversity in say, Hong Kong or, or New York or, or London or Paris. So why this, you know this kind of sandwich approach is important to the success of any diversity and inclusion initiative or strategy is that there needs to be some strategic orientation. And I talked about that,

which is understanding the consumer, being close to the consumer, having a representative organization. Can you be more specific about a representative organization? What does it look like? What does representative organization look like in Ponyo? What does representative organization look like in Tokyo? What does representative organization look like in Kuala Lumpur? It looks different, right? We're not talking about the same demographic and the same representation in all of those

places, yet we are talking about being diverse and close to the consumer. So we have to make sure that there's a structure and an overall strategy and an overall direction. Yet each business unit, each Maison, each location is left to really imagine their own success in this space while understanding that no one's exempt from the discussion. That we could say just because we're in a certain place in a certain part of the world, that we're not taking part of this discussion. Back to my recent visit to Cognac, they're doing some amazing work on the cognitive diversity element.

They're doing some great work on bringing different ability individuals from the community to work in the facility there. So in terms of diversifying the way they work, they're doing it really well in their context. And that's what I think it looks like when it's done well anywhere in the world. Can you give us an example where the cultural shifts you've worked hard to drive within the organization have helped real people, your colleagues take more control over their careers?

How do these changes manifest in individual employee experiences? I was talking with somebody earlier today and we were talking about the career management and this person said, a number of years ago, I would have been very hesitant to even raise my voice in terms of being interested for other roles.

I mean, you imagine like that kind of energy and enthusiasm for one's career. And the person felt it. I'm not sure that that's the right call for me to raise that. So what happens in that situation is that person would ultimately leave the organization because they could they would feel safer somewhere else than in the organization. I think that has, as she said to me, fundamentally changed so that she feels liberated to have those discussions. And that's what I hope those are the kinds of conversations we can have more of to help those are the kinds of conversations we can have more of to help organizations and the leaders and organizations understand that bringing forth the ideas

of everyone in the organization is good for the organization and good for them as leaders. So there's personal interest as well in their success. Yep. I'm thrilled to have heard that from this individual. And I was even more thrilled to have heard it from this individual because she's a person of color. So she feels like in an organization like ours, which can be traditional, relatively male dominated, and relatively not color oriented that she feels like now she has a place.

So that to me is huge progress and I felt very good about that. And it's not to say that we have finished the job, because I hope that there are more individuals like her who feel like they have a place to grow and they have a voice to be here. So in that way, if I think about your intention in this podcast. When we first met, you told me about publishing a new book. The title is Bond. What drove you to write the first book in your life

about creating a sense of belonging and bonding in organizations? How do your own experiences tie into the bigger picture of diversity and inclusion you lay out in your book? The more I get close to finishing the book, the more excited I get about it. So this is an effort I started a couple of years ago, and it was an idea that actually somebody gave to me and said, Hey, you know, you've got these experiences that you really have an obligation to share.

And I had never really thought of my experience as an obligation to share. But when this person gave me that advice, I thought, okay, maybe I could do this. And so we started to pull together some ideas about what does it take for any organization to create that true sense of belonging, whether it's a big organization like LVMH or a volunteer organization like Hong Kong Gay Games. There are certain elements that bring people closer to the mission, create a safe working space and create a place where people want to thrive and grow. It was also informed a lot by what I saw in terms of the discussion that was happening around DE and I,

which I think were amplified by the loudest voices on the margins. So whether someone was considered woke or anti-woke or pro this, anti that, my view has always been about diversity and inclusion, that those voices are always going to exist and that they've certainly been amplified in recent years. But the reality is that most people that I know want to work in organizations where they feel like they're listened to, where they feel like they can come to work and it's safe, they feel like they are heard, and that they can do their best work and grow their career to whatever extent they want to.

That's to me the essence of belonging and the essence of inclusion and connection, That's to me the essence of belonging and the essence of inclusion and connection. And that's really what I wrote the book about. I was able to meet some incredibly interesting people and highlight their stories and their voices in the book. And I hope that it's something that will help others to understand that this middle ground in our world is one that's much larger than oftentimes we may be led to believe by the loudest voices on the margins.

Please do share a copy with me when it's available. I would like to host you again to talk more about your book, your ideas. From what I heard, this book is not simply about DEI. The world of work is changing. Building bonds, building bridges, building spaces across individuals is not limited within the walls of organization. It's simply the basic need of human beings. I can see that your book applies to a lot of real scenarios. I hope so. I hope that the inspiration people take from the book is that connection and belonging happen in many, many different ways. And again, it's not a discussion of sort of woke or anti-woke, as one would be led to believe by reading social media these days that, again,

people want to generally feel included. I want to, wherever I live or work, I want to feel like I belong there. And when I have that sense of belonging, I'm willing to do more. I'm willing to give more. If in my neighborhood, I feel like I belong in my neighborhood, maybe I'm more willing to pick up trash on the street when I see it. If I feel like I belong in my organization, I may be willing to do a little bit more on a project because I feel like I'm connected to the organization, I'm connected to my team and my boss and the mission of the

organization. So that's the power of, of a sense of belonging. It's not just a safe space or a buzzword. It's really a business driver, an organization driver, and a mental helper, and I think that this is the right time to have this discussion. I think actually the role of chief change officer is imperative to success of anybody in the company now, because where the best ideas come are certainly not always from managers.

So the best ideas come from anybody. Yes, and we would have more Chief Change Officers around the world. Thank you so much. Thank you. With great pleasure. Thank you for including me in your primary and first effort and I'm really excited to be part of it. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like what you heard, don't forget to subscribe to our show, leave us top rated reviews,

So leave us top-rated reviews, check out our website, and follow me on social media. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Until next time, take care.