---
title: "Pete Cherecwich of Northern Trust: Why Cultural Diversity And Global Consensus Are The Ultimate Drivers Of Business Evolution"
url: "https://authoritymag.co/articles/pete-cherecwich-of-northern-trust-why-cultural-diversity-and-global-consensus-are-the-ultimate-d"
publisher: "Authority Magazine"
author: "Authority Magazine Editorial Staff"
authorUrl: "https://authoritymag.co/authors/authority-magazine-editorial-staff"
interviewee: "Pete Cherecwich"
company: "Northern Trust"
category: "Business"
datePublished: "2022-04-25T21:50:19.502Z"
dateModified: "2026-11-12T17:07:48.870Z"
tags: "Business"
---

# Pete Cherecwich of Northern Trust: Why Cultural Diversity And Global Consensus Are The Ultimate Drivers Of Business Evolution

*The asset servicing president at Northern Trust shares how global experience, digital disruption, and continuous adaptability are reshaping the financial services industry.*

> Until you’ve actually lived in another country, it’s almost impossible to really understand that culture. Learning those lessons allowed me to not only grow in my understanding of how others conduct business but helped me appreciate that cultural diversity is a powerful thing when you are able to integrate new ideas and ways of working.

---

T*here have been major disruptions in recent years that promise to change the very nature of work. From the ongoing shifts caused by the COVID19 pandemic, the impacts caused by automation, and other possible disruptions to the status quo, many wonder what the future holds in terms of employment. For example, a report by the McKinsey Global Institute that estimated automation will eliminate*[73 million jobs by 2030](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/11/29/automation-could-kill-73-million-u-s-jobs-2030/899878001/)*.*

*To address this open question, we reached out to successful leaders in business, government, and labor, as well as thought leaders about the future of work to glean their insights and predictions on the future of work and the workplace.*

*As a part of this interview series called “Preparing For The Future Of Work”, we had the pleasure to interview Pete Cherecwich.*

*Pete Cherecwich is a banking industry veteran and distinguished business leader with more than 25 years of experience who continually challenges assumptions and traditional ways of doing things. As president of Asset Servicing at Northern Trust, a global bank based in Chicago, Pete and his team are transforming back- and middle-office processes in a business that serves clients ranging from public pensions to sovereign wealth funds and alternative investment fund managers. Pete’s team also is partnering with fintechs to bring investment data science to the front office of investment managers and asset owners, while adopting the agile and digital-first workplace approach used by their fintech partners.*

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**Our readers like to get an idea of who you are and where you came from. Can you tell us a bit about your background? Where do you come from? What are the life experiences that most shaped your current self?**

I’ve been in the financial services industry for my entire professional life. One of the things I love about global custody and fund services is the constant innovation and application of emerging technologies to the financial system. At one time, the challenge was supporting cross-border investing on a large scale. Now, we’re developing ways to hold, value and trade cryptocurrency and digital assets. The financial world keeps changing.

In terms of experiences that have shaped me, four years early on in my career, working in Tokyo broadened my perspective. Japan is culturally very distinct from the U.S. For example, the Japanese place a strong premium on taking the time to reach consensus in business decisions, and everyone moving forward together to execute once a decision is made. Until you’ve actually lived in another country, it’s almost impossible to really understand that culture. Learning those lessons allowed me to not only grow in my understanding of how others conduct business but helped me appreciate that cultural diversity is a powerful thing when you are able to integrate new ideas and ways of working.

**What do you expect to be the major disruptions for employers in the next 10–15 years? How should employers pivot to adapt to these disruptions?**

Across many industries, the work-from-home experience over the last two years is driving greater workplace flexibility. Hybrid work — the balance between working from home and being in the office — will become the norm for many. And this requires a new approach to scheduling, to office floor plans, and even meetings. Technology has enabled us to work from home so successfully in recent times and will remain central in helping everyone adapt to a more hybrid model and new ways of working.

More broadly, in financial services, the continued digitization of everything is going to be a huge factor. I was at a conference recently where leaders, including a former U.S. Treasury official, discussed how Stablecoins — cryptocurrency pegged to the value of a national currency or other reference assets — are going to change how payments are made. Digital assets are coming, make no mistake. That’s going to be a big disruption in the financial services industry, for sure.

**The choice as to whether or not a young person should pursue a college degree was once a “no-brainer”. But with the existence of many high profile millionaires (and billionaires) who did not earn degrees, as well as the fact that many graduates are saddled with crushing student loan debt and unable to find jobs it has become a much more complex question. What advice would you give to young adults considering whether or not to go to college?**

That’s an interesting question and very much a personal choice. I was a political science and Soviet Studies major at University. One could argue that degree is completely useless in this world, given the Soviet Union doesn’t exist anymore! But college does provide critical thinking skills that can be applied in any career.

I would say, in general, college is a good thing. However, if you’re taking on a huge debt burden to get that degree, you might want to consider all your options. Learning a technical skill, whether at a University or Trade School, can be equally valuable as the world always needs accountants, plumbers, electricians, etc. Everyone’s circumstances are different and therefore no two paths are the same. The key is education, no matter how it is delivered.

**Despite the doom and gloom predictions, there are, and likely still will be, jobs available. How do you see job seekers having to change their approaches to finding not only employment, but employment that fits their talents and interests?**

Both employers and job seekers need to look beyond surface categories like industry, sector, type of labor required, to the *purpose* of the firm and the job. For instance, banking might have a negative connotation for some job-seekers. But what if I told you that in our business, what we do is actually make sure that your parents’ pension funds and your investment in your 401k are safe, that it’s valued correctly, and that the money will be there when you retire? Or that a charitable foundation is able to pursue investment strategies necessary to perform its mission? Then you might say, ‘Oh, I see, that’s a good purpose. I like that.’

I would put more of the burden on the employers. Today, we have to be able to articulate our value to individuals looking for jobs because they will likely have choices and options. If you can’t explain your purpose, you have a problem.

**The statistics of artificial intelligence and automation eliminating millions of jobs, appears frightening to some. For example, Walmart aims to eliminate cashiers altogether and Dominos is instituting pizza delivery via driverless vehicles. How should people plan their careers such that they can hedge their bets against being replaced by automation or robots?**

The number one thing people can do is embrace change. Those individuals who are willing to learn new skills, understand and embrace change will succeed because jobs are constantly evolving. That was true for the horse and carriage driver a century ago, and it’s true now in financial services. Automation has eliminated a lot of processing jobs in the back office over the years, but it also creates new positions. Within my organization, some of the roles may have changed but we employ more people than ever. The ability to demonstrate skills in critical thinking, understanding of financial technology, and communications are at a premium but can be learned. The ability to adapt is paramount, and that starts with a positive approach to change.

**Technological advances and pandemic restrictions hastened the move to working from home. Do you see this trend continuing? Why or why not?**

Yes, I do see it continuing. People have gotten used to the flexibility of working from home. They realize you can actually get as much work done from home as at the office, and you can avoid the commute, have dinner with the family, and all those wonderful things.

But many people also wonder how they will move their career forward while working remotely. They’re realizing they also need to be in the office to meet people, work side-by-side and to build relationships. So I think we’ll always have some people who will prefer to work from home full-time, and some that want to be in the office full-time, but based on my personal experience the vast majority want a mix.

**What societal changes do you foresee as necessary to support the fundamental changes to work?**

Business managers need to focus more on outcomes rather than hours spent in the office or at the desk. This is a change that is under way and needs to become the norm to support a more flexible workplace. When people work from home, they don’t work the same hours. They might take a few hours in the afternoon to watch their child’s game or some other event, and then work from 7 to 10 at night. You can’t do that with every job, but where the opportunity for flexibility exists, I think we have to continue to move towards outcome-based management.

Valuing time off is also important. We should not be proud of leaving vacation days on the table. Europeans are very much more focused, in my experience, on maintaining a work-life balance while Americans focus more on work. And that’s not necessarily a positive.

**What changes do you think will be the most difficult for employers to accept? What changes do you think will be the most difficult for employees to accept?**

Employers may be under additional pressure to give employees the freedom to set their own schedules. However, there may be limits to what employers can offer — from both a risk and regulatory standpoint. Also, firms may have certain product or service delivery schedules and daily deadlines that must be met.

You can still have flexibility — for example, allowing people to work three days from home, two days in the office — but it is likely you always need to have some people in the office for certain types of activity, for disaster recovery purposes, and that type of thing.

**The COVID-19 pandemic helped highlight the inadequate social safety net that many workers at all pay levels have. Is this something that you think should be addressed? In your opinion how should this be addressed?**

I’m encouraged by the focus that has been put on community engagement and local organizations helping their fellow citizens during the pandemic. At a corporate level, Northern Trust has a highly focused philanthropic strategy that concentrates volunteerism and contributions on four key areas of fundamental impact: educational excellence, food security, accessible health care and affordable housing. In 2020, Northern Trust made charitable contributions of more than $16 million, equaling 1% of pre-tax net income, which is in the top quartile benchmark for financial companies.

From my perspective as an employer with a global workforce, I’ve seen a wide range of needs in countries around the world, and we’ve tried to address those at the local level, with support and direction from the top.

That said, one of the most effective solutions I’ve seen was developed by a small team in India looking to help out fellow Northern Trust colleagues who were struggling to access basic food and medical supplies. Using Google Maps, the team built an app that enabled them to see where other team members were located around the city. As a result, they were able to stay connected, get supplies to those in need, and look out for each other, whether they were working or not. This wasn’t a corporate initiative or a management suggestion — it was a team on the ground saying, “We’ve got a problem; we feel empowered enough to do something about it; we’re going to build a phone app.” That’s bringing innovation to a social problem.

**Despite all that we have said earlier, what is your greatest source of optimism about the future of work?**

I’m optimistic about the potential for increased flexibility and outcome-based evaluation of work to become the standard. Rewarding for outcomes rather than hours spent in the office will give people who are entering the workforce now a much better chance to have both a great job and a fulfilling life outside of work.

**Historically, major disruptions to the status quo in employment, particularly disruptions that result in fewer jobs, are temporary with new jobs replacing the jobs lost. Unfortunately, there has often been a gap between the job losses and the growth of new jobs. What do you think we can do to reduce the length of this gap?**

We need a public-private model to anticipate what skills are needed in the future and build the pipeline of worker training around those skills. That’s a big challenge for our society and economy, obviously, but with advances in data science and digitization of many industries, I think there is potential to make real progress.

**Okay, wonderful. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “Top 5 Trends To Watch In the Future of Work?” (Please share a story or example for each.)**

1. The hybrid workplace: A lot of industries will not be going back to being in the office 9 to 5, five days a week. The hybrid model is here to stay.

Physically, organizations may be able to drastically decrease their office space, but will have to invest in structural changes to the spaces that remain. Some of this will be health-related, like touchless elevator controls and better air filtration. Other changes to floor layouts, ‘free address’ workstations and meeting rooms enabled for a better videoconferencing experience are all likely investments. Fortunately, pre-pandemic, we had already been preparing for more collaborative and high-tech workspaces in a number of our offices around the world. I know a lot of our partners are excited about getting back into their new office environments.

2. Diversity, Equity & Inclusion: We live in a world where diverse people, thoughts, and skills are critical to our collective success. Welcoming and encouraging an inclusive workplace results in innovative thinking and enhances how we do business. A broad array of perspectives and abilities is crucial to fostering dynamic relationships with a global, diverse client base.

Equity is a cornerstone of our strategy at Northern Trust, where women and ethnic minorities represent more than half the members of our Board of Directors as well our U.S. executive vice presidents. We use a DE&I dashboard as a mechanism to increase representation at all levels through continued measurement of hiring, promotion and retention. To ensure diversity, we require recruiters to present diverse candidate slates. We have also implemented diverse interview panels and decision-makers in the interview process.

It is also important to ensure that everyone feels able to confidently and authentically be themselves. Inclusion is a cultural change, not just a numbers game. Can you become a destination employer of choice because people know they can be themselves, have their voices heard and be valued? That is our goal.

The team is everything — ideas, and the ability to execute on them, come from people.

3. Outcomes-based evaluation: This is partly related to the move toward flexible scheduling, and also rewarding for outcomes rather than hours spent in the office. But I also believe we need to rethink the annual performance review.

Quality should serve as the foundation of self-appraisals and performance measurement, and the key is for management to clearly define performance excellence and then effectively measure it. At Northern Trust we are adapting the “measure what matters” approach outlined by author John Doerr, establishing objectives and key results (“OKR’s”) for each business that can then be used to track performance. Having clear objectives and key results will help ensure all parties to the review process are aligned, from the CEO all the way through the organization.

Even more fundamentally, leaders should of course be having ongoing conversations with their teams so that, come time for performance reviews, there are no surprises.

4. Continued automation and technology-driven change: The only constant is change, especially in businesses that rely on enterprise technology to serve clients around the world. As more tasks become automated, new positions and opportunities open up. For companies and workers, training is crucial to maintain skills and execute on business strategy.

In addition to in-house training at Northern Trust, we provide tuition reimbursement for undergraduate and graduate degrees. In 2020, our assistance programs enabled 268 participants to complete more than 930 courses in the U.S., while more than 400 employee participants attained various industry certifications in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and the Asia-Pacific (APAC) regions.

I also think it’s important for leaders and managers to engage with people from outside their industry. Don’t just attend your regular industry conference events — try something adjacent, or even completely left field. There are so many commonalities in the challenges faced by what you think may be unrelated industries: the further integration and deployment of technology to boost productivity, ways to improve the client experience, and so on.

5. Engagement and Climate: COVID has launched us into a new era of human interaction. Leaders that will succeed in this era are those that are able to create forward-thinking engagement practices that will allow them to ensure client and employee needs are met and, more importantly, that relationships thrive through new channels and ways of interacting. That being said, I think most people are craving more personal interaction, at least some of the time.

Separately, but related, I was looking at our carbon footprint recently. I said to myself, ‘Wow, this is awesome, our numbers are so good.’ Then it hit me that no one had been on an airplane, the buildings were empty, etc., due to the pandemic.

So, how does all this turn out? It could be that Covid-19 was actually a positive for climate change. The necessity to embrace the virtual engagement model on a global scale moved us forward by years and years. Now, it will be up to all of us to balance our need for personal interaction with the knowledge that not getting on so many planes and going into offices every day will do more than just help us balance our personal life. It will be good for the climate.

**Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how this quote has shaped your perspective?**

A senior manager once told me, “You always have the authority to make the right decision.” Sounds simple, but the life lesson is actually a little more complicated. I realized that you have to take risks in order to advance your career and make progress as a business. Ultimately the people who are promoted are those who take risks within the boundaries that are allowed — and who get more things right than they get wrong.

**We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.**

I’m a lifelong fan of the New England Patriots, and Bill Belichick is an NFL coaching legend, so it would be great to have lunch with Bill. I’m also a huge soccer fan, and I often say as a manager you can either be a football coach, who calls every play, or a soccer manager, who trains the players in his or her philosophy and lets them play. I think it would be really interesting to get Belichick’s take on leadership and the differences between those two sports.

**Our readers often like to follow our interview subjects’ careers. How can they further follow your work online?**

I post blogs regularly on Medium — follow me at [Face Value by Pete Cherecwich](https://medium.com/@Pete_C123?p=a112ac6bd71). You can also check my [bio page on the Northern Trust website](https://www.northerntrust.com/united-states/insights-research/asset-servicing/experts/cherecwich-peter) or connect with me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/petercherecwich/). Thanks!

**Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this. We wish you continued success and good health!**

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Source: https://authoritymag.co/articles/pete-cherecwich-of-northern-trust-why-cultural-diversity-and-global-consensus-are-the-ultimate-d (Authority Magazine, Business). Interviewee answers are first-person statements of the guest. Index of all pages: https://authoritymag.co/llms.txt