Quicken Loans and the Rock Family of Companies are built on 19 carefully thought out philosophies, or as they call them, ISMs, that compile all of their values into active ways they plan to inspire change. From “this is how we leave our mark,” and “obsessed with finding a better way,” to “take the roast out of the oven” and “we eat our own dog food,” these ISMs are the bedrock of their culture and unite them together.
The 19 ISMs are also why Quicken Loans and the Rock FOC were able to quickly respond to the pandemic and protests related to racial injustices that have defined this year. They didn’t have to pull words or beliefs out of thin air. Instead, they harnessed the knowledge of their leaders and ISMs already in place to galvanize team members.
Two of the change agents at Quicken Loans and the Rock FOC are Trina Scott, chief diversity officer at Quicken Loans, and Laura Grannemann, vice president of strategic investments at Quicken Loans Community Fund. Both women were also named HousingWire 2020 Women of Influence in this issue.
After the death of George Floyd, Quicken Loans CEO Jay Farner released a statement, saying, “As the CEO of the Rock Family of Companies with more than 30,000 team members across the United States, I am committed to ensuring our African-American team members feel safe. More importantly, our team members need to continue being heard – and feel comfortable expressing pain and frustration without fear of reprisal.”
“In partnership with Trina Scott, our chief diversity officer, and leaders across the family of companies, I am immediately instituting an action plan to advance meaningful and lasting discussions on race, police brutality and inclusion,” Farner said.
Scott expanded on this comment in an interview with HousingWire, stating that their action plan is nothing new when compared to the diversity and inclusion plans they already have in place.
However, she added, “As our vice chairman told me, it’s put the pedal to the metal. It’s time to move forward very quickly and accelerate all of our efforts.”
To Scott, diversity and inclusion begins with culture.
“Oftentimes, when people are in the diversity, equity and inclusion space, the knee jerk reaction is to turn to programming,” she said. “I’m proud to say that while we have programmatic things that are in place, we really started to do some self-reflecting of our organization.”
Scott explained that the company started this intentional effort three and a half years ago, and rather than having to come in and build something new, she was able to build off of what team members had already put in place.
“It was really important for us to humanize this thing around diversity and inclusion and not make it so technical and difficult,” she said. “This is not an easy topic to discuss. Many of us, like myself, grew up where you don’t talk about politics, race, religion, sexual orientation, and voila, that’s what we do every single day.”
Scott also shared some advice for other executives trying to promote diversity and inclusion in their company.
“First, look inward,” she said. “You can’t buy this off the shelf. It’s really taking a look at what your organization is built on and what the mission and the culture of the organization is.”
The next step she highlights is looking at the metrics and data, which allows you to see where you are and see the measurement in the areas that you really need to focus on.
There’s a debate right now about whether you should have numbers or metrics that you’re trying to reach, and if that equals quotas, Scott said. But each organization has to make that determination for themselves by looking inward.
“We all have to feel comfortable with being uncomfortable,” Scott added. “There’s no playbook for this. You can’t turn to chapter seven, section six that’ll tell you how to deal with a pandemic and racial uprising. The first and most important thing is giving each other space and grace.”
Meanwhile, leading another company within the Quicken Loans and Rock FOC that shares the same ISMs and drive as Scott, is Laura Grannemann. As vice president of strategic investments at the Quicken Loans Community Fund, Grannemann oversees the philanthropic arm of Quicken Loans and the Rock FOC, helping drive systemic change through investing $30 million annually.
“The opportunity that we saw when we first founded this organization was that we have such a dramatic influence across several different spheres,” she said. “It’s not just our philanthropic capital, although our philanthropic capital is really important. The best way to make an impact in our communities has been to pull all of those different resources together and leverage them at the same time towards one mission.”
Grannemann explained that what they do is most powerful when paired with their resources, such as their team members, their government affairs advocacy or technology.
“When we’re able to pull all of these resources together, we can really drive change, especially in the housing industry,” she said.
“We are extraordinarily passionate about taking all of those resources and driving impact in the city of Detroit,“ Grannemann said. “And when I say impact, I don’t mean just surface-level impact. I mean big systemic change to the way that our systems work here in the city of Detroit. Clearly, there’s a lot of challenges. And some of these systems have been broken for a very long time and are not serving our community.”
The fund makes data-driven investments in housing, employment and public life, but to spotlight just its housing impact in 2019, they created communities to house nearly 7,000 veterans through the Built for Zero initiative, a movement of more than 80 communities redefining what is possible and what it takes to end homelessness,” she said. “They also launched the second annual Neighbor to Neighbor outreach campaign, reaching 60,000 homes at risk of tax foreclosure and helping a record number of residents avoid tax foreclosure in 2019. Thirdly, they added 557 participants to the Make It Home program for a three-year total of 1,157 families who avoided tax foreclosure-related displacement.”
In the interview, Grannemann dug deeper into the example of the property tax burdens in the city, explaining the downstream impact of the taxes.
“Today, we still have roughly 40,000 to 50,000 properties in the city of Detroit that are blighted and still need some significant repair or demolition,” she said. “We know that we need to really attack the root cause of this challenge, which is that disproportionately high property tax burden and fundamentally poverty that causes the inability to pay for those property taxes.”
One of the cornerstones of how Grannemann enacts change is by tapping into data.
“The first thing that I always encourage any partner or team member that I’m working with is to better understand the problem, better understand the data and put yourself in the shoes of the person who’s walking through that problem,” she said. “If we don’t listen, if we don’t learn, if we don’t understand that experience, we’re never going to be able to address it in a way that’s meaningful.”
The restoration, success and vibrancy of Detroit is a big deal to Quicken Loans and the Rock FOC. Grannemann added that a former mayor once said, “Detroit today is your town tomorrow.”
He meant that Detroit serves as an example to the country for what’s going to happen, she said. And while he meant it in a very positive way, Grannemann said, “I think we see it both in positive and negative ways.”
But by harnessing their home in Detroit and by being the nation’s largest mortgage lender, Quicken Loans and the ROCK FOC are able to create lasting and impactful change inside and outside of the industry.”
To read the August issue of HousingWire Magazine in full, click here.
