The investment industry is notorious for having a homogenous workforce. Piper Jaffray’s CEO shares his thoughts on how to make greater diversity progress.

- By Paul Lachhu

Interviewing Andrew Duff, chairman and CEO of Piper Jaffray, is refreshing because he is so candid about the investment industry’s progress to date in the area of diversity and inclusion. Piper Jaffray is a leading investment bank and asset management firm that was started in 1895 and over the years has expanded, been bought out and then spun off, and gone through several acquisitions.

One of the more recent strategies for success is globalization, and the company currently has offices across the U.S. and in Zurich, London and Hong Kong. Headquartered in Minneapolis, Piper Jaffray continues to evolve under leadership, and this gives other businesses insight into a company addressing both globalization and the need for greater diversity and inclusion.

Duff is faced with a dual challenge. He must develop a corporate culture that is fully supportive of diversity and inclusion and thrives in a diverse, globalized environment. At the same time, the business is part of the financial industry that has been notoriously slow to adopt diversity.

As he succinctly describes it, “The makeup of our industry has a more homogeneous nature, which, candidly speaking, is white males. It’s been a relatively slow evolution to a broader employee base.”

This is not intended as criticism but recognition that the financial industry must make a stronger effort to add diversity to its workforce, leadership and customer base.

Duff gives a glimpse into his approach to changing corporate culture, strengthening workforce inclusion and attracting diverse key customers. These three strategies do not work in a vacuum, though. One of the critical points made is that employees and customers have intricate relationships, and the strongest ones are those where each understands the other’s perspectives and cultures and where mutual respect is present.

You recently participated in the University of St. Thomas Forum on Workplace Inclusion in Minneapolis. What was your key takeaway?

I appreciated the evolution of the discussion to a broader one on diversity and inclusion, including the different perspectives on D&I and how to surface the opportunities and biases. It is a holistic way to think about the topic.

What is the culture at Piper Jaffray?

Though a financial firm, we see it as more a human capital business. Attracting the broadest and most inclusive group of employees, who potentially want to be in this industry and firm to pursue a successful career, is distinctly a large part of our value proposition.

You are starting to move aggressively in terms of globally building customer base. You are in London, Zurich, and, to some extent, Hong Kong. What is your strategy for building a talented, diverse workforce?

With globalization comes another dimension of diversity because we have to be cognizant of the firm’s culture, our potential employee base, and what makes the firm look attractive from a diversity perspective.

Once diverse people are part of our firm, they must be comfortable working in their environments, see opportunities, get supported and feel connected. They must feel like it’s a collaborative environment, and that’s another key component of our value proposition.

What do you see as the big challenges for Piper Jaffray?

The homogeneity of the industry makes it more challenging to attract diverse people as employees and customers. We work to overcome the industry’s image because diversity brings different perspectives and leads to a stronger value proposition. The client base has shifted dramatically. Once predominantly white males, it is now very diverse. Clients in the marketplace expect their counter parties, vendors and key advisors to reflect similar qualities.

You are in Hong Kong and will eventually enter India and some of the more developed emerging countries. How will your culture change? What will you do differently to engage your key customers?

When you enter a new geography, there are different norms and different business practices. One of the major issues is communication. And I’m not speaking in the narrowest sense of language.

For example, we have a Hong Kong office, but our headquarters is in Minneapolis. Worldwide, Piper Jaffrey operates in 13 time zones. In any direct dialogue (not email) like a phone conversation or video conference, someone has to be up in the middle of the night. If staff members are insensitive or indifferent, they think of all meetings and discussions as occurring during a business day in Minneapolis, when in fact it’s the reverse for the Hong Kong staff.

What is the role of technology in this process?

Technology is critical to strong global communication. It is offering effective communication in ever evolving ways. If a client is using it, then you have to know how to use it. They have preferences about when they want to have conferences, receive emails and so on. We have to be able to respond to their preferences.

What does responsibility in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) mean to a company like Piper Jaffray? What can other companies learn from you?

You have commitments to share in the community and diversity, and inclusion is part of that. We contribute resources annually to the community through the Keystone Program, which was started in mid-1970s. What makes our approach unique is that it is very deliberate. We put our resources behind the activities that our employees are most engaged in based on an annual survey.

Do you use metrics to measure the success of diversity initiatives and the efforts to generate and keep customers?

As a human capital business, we have a lot of metrics about our own employee base, like where we are recruiting, what kind of success we are having at attracting people in specific efforts, retention over time, and so on. We are always looking for trends over time. We also track the client base, assessing where we are losing and gaining clients in various areas. The information is used for decision making.

You assumed your role in 2000. How did you manage change until now with all that we have gone through, like the financial crisis and the introduction of high speed trading and all the other things that are events?

For us, it has worked well to prioritize our clients as to their interests and to be sensitive to their needs. We are a relatively flat organization in the belief that the best decisions you can make are as close to the client and/or the marketplace as possible. Except for the few appropriately needed, having multiple layers inside the organization to make decisions can deter getting close to the client.

We have a core set of values called our Guiding Principles. I spend a lot of time making sure all the employees on a global basis understand them.

The Guiding Principles enable our ability to push out decision making as close to the clients and marketplace as possible. With that approach, you can get through the dynamics of whatever is going on because you have people communicating effectively.

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