PODCAST

February 22, 2025

EP#4

Guest | Jon Torpy, President and GM of Epiroc USA, LLC

Jon is President and General Manager of Epiroc USA, a global company that serves the mining, construction, and infrastructure industries. During this episode, Jon shares how he and his leadership team led their organization through a transformational culture change that has resulted in becoming one of the top performing companies within the Epiroc organization as well as being recognized by USA Today as one of the best places to work in America.

Some of what you’ll learn is how Jon and his team embraced a new strategic vision and mission, and then invited the entire organization to be active participants in shaping their journey forward. In this interview, Jon shares how they communicated the vision, what organizational changes were made, how they had to change their approach around people leadership. What’s amazing about this journey is how their organization persevered and continued to make tough choices despite the challenges and difficulties surrounding the changes.

Jon will remind all of us that it does matter how we show up as leaders, and that we need to continually upgrade our leadership playbook because what worked before may no longer be relevant today.

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Show Notes:

Their company’s vision was about creating an organization that could consistently achieve financial success while also creating a culture where success was defined by having high levels of customer and employee satisfaction, and excellent safety records.

Their journey started with a front-end organizational assessment to determine the level of change readiness within the company. After their early assessment, their leadership team decided there was enough genuine desire for change amongst their employees that they could move fairly quickly and start implementing changes within the first 12 months.
Jon wasn’t bashful about painting a picture of what it would be like to work at their company, and he was deliberate in that he invited employees to be part of this journey. These messages and actions helped drive the front end employee engagement that proved to be critical.
They maintained consistent and frequent messaging around the vision, and talked about the future state being a company with more alignment, greater openness and transparency, and fewer silos.
Building trust was a key. Jon realized the importance of building trust with all employees, and relentlessly worked to maintain transparency. He knew his teams could take the good and the bad news, and so they intentionally shared the realities of the situation.
They knew that with all the change going on there would be rumors which left unchecked could spin out of control. To stay ahead of the rumors, they continually listened to employees and built in structured feedback loops – such as a 25-person stakeholder group. This group turned out to be so important to maintaining a close connection to all employees.
The company embraced what they call a culture of freedom with accountability, which basically means they invite people to innovate, challenge status quos, and creatively problem solve while also ensuring their accountability for results.
And lastly, Jon stressed the importance of making sure leadership is about “doing things with people.” It’s one thing to map out a strategy and communicate the vision, but it’s another thing when you have to constantly be out in the field asking for feedback, encouraging people to keep the momentum, and being open and transparent.

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