The Courage To Live Our Values

Several months into the renewal process, change was happening everywhere. People and teams felt liberated to align their work with the vision and values. This was a little frightening because they were
not asking for permission and many in leadership felt we were losing control - I was one of those leaders. One day I was reading a national newspaper where we regularly placed employment ads and was surprised when I read several very unusual titles of the ads. They read:

   “ My CEO believes that trust begins  at the top – 
 does  yours?”

         “Does the Chairman of the Board of your company 
           believe that Leaders don’t inflict pain, they bear it?  
           Ours does”


          “ Our goal is to be a Place of Realized Potential”

I was taken aback at first. I was the VP for People, responsible for “HR” and I had not authorized “my” recruiters to change our ads - I quickly realized I did not need to. A powerful concept was at play, the recruiters were serving the shared vision and values of the company; they were not there to serve me.  I had learned a very important lesson; leadership is a function, not a status. My role was to create the environment that enables employees to align the organizations policies, practices, behaviors and results with the company’s vision, values and goals and to help them achieve excellence.

This movement was alive with people and teams taking the ownership to make things happen in the offices and in the manufacturing plants across the company. We had won the American Airlines seating contract for their new headquarters in Dallas. A team from our seating plant there delivered the chairs on a Friday however when they unloaded the chairs they discovered the packaging had created indents in the backs of the chairs. American Airlines was holding their open house that upcoming Monday. The team decided to take the ownership and manually rub out the indents over the weekend. I am certain they violated several employment laws, they did not ask for overtime. Management did not know they had done this until several weeks later when Max received a letter from the CEO of American Airlines. You see the team had attracted the attention of people at American Airlines who were working over the weekend preparing for the open house. The Herman Miller employee team had also left a letter that was signed by every member of the team that said, “Have a wonderful open house. Thank you for being a Herman Miller Customer”. That letter made its way to the CEO of American Airlines, who in turn sent it to Max De Pree. We shared this story across the company. This team also inspired us to create the Outstanding Team Awards, and of course, the Dallas Chair Plant team was the first recipients.

Leading with shared vision and values is a highly enlightened way to lead people. Engaging them in creating the vision captures their mind, heart and spirit. Engaging people in the process of transforming the vision into reality captures their imagination. When people are given the opportunity to work together in teams, contributing their ideas and gifts, and being valued and recognized for their contribution – they accomplish amazing things - and love doing it! This created a win/win/win experience.

FAMILY, SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY 
Family, Social and Environmental Responsibility was the most revolutionary of all the values, especially for a publically traded Fortune 500 company. I was sure that these values would cause toughest debates and hardest decisions amongst the leadership team; I was wrong. The team was very engaged and proud of this set of values.  These values helped us to see the inextricable connection between the company and people, families, communities and the environment. We made courageous and radical decisions to align our policies and practices and behaviors with these important values:

I remember on one occasion, we were reviewing our high potential leaders and decided it was time to promote one of the best and the brightest in the company. Vicki had a proven track record of success and everyone had the highest respect for her leadership qualities; she exemplified the company values. This was an easy decision. When we approached her with a Vice President position, she declined. Vicki had recently had her second child and decided that with two children under three years old, she needed to work part time. We understood but we were disappointed. I remember the leadership dialogue that followed. Phil Mercarella, our SVP of Sales and Marketing came up with a win/win/win solution. Herman Miller made innovative furniture designed for offices and yet many customers were purchasing our products for their homes. We had been talking for months about creating a division that sold our products for use in homes. Phil suggested we promote Vicki to General Manager to lead Herman Miller for the Home and honor her desire to work part time.

Vicki and her team held many of their meetings at her home allowing her to nurture her children. It also allowed the team to develop the strategies for products and services within an authentic home environment. This gave them a tremendous advantage. They successfully developed the products and services surpassing our expectations in cost, time and quality. When I asked Vicki years later what it was like to be a “Part-time” General Manager charged with launching a brand new product line, she said it was a wonderful experience. Her life was very integrated. She did not have to compartmentalize or juggle between family and work.

                    “My children use to think that all families
                    visited furniture stores when they went 
                    on vacation – It was just my life”. 

Vicki Tenhagen

I experienced in a very personal way, Herman Miller’s commitment to family when I felt I had to leave Herman Miller and move my daughter to Chicago. After my daughter was born I thought I could be super-women, I thought I could handle it all. But things got complicated after my divorce. I went through four nannies in six weeks. The first nanny was taking my daughter on her house-to-house sales calls, selling Avon cosmetics. The second and third nannies were more interested in entertaining their boyfriends than attending to my daughter. Even during these tough times, I was able to “keep it together”.

At Herman Miller It was not uncommon for Nicole to spend the day playing in my office, especially when I got the unexpected call from the sitter that she could not come that day. My assistant Donna Kowe, loved Nicole like a family member and my colleagues in corporate office were like her extended family. Even as a single parent, it seemed I was able to be a nurturing mother and have a successful career. Herman Miller made that possible.

                   “Negros belong at the back of the bus”
“No Negros allowed”

One day that all changed; I woke up to a new reality. I saw all my decisions about my child, my job and my home - as bad decisions. I was a failure.  My primary responsibility in life was to protect and nurture my daughter and to create a safe, positive environment for her to learn, grow, and develop. This day, this defining event, made it apparent I was failing at the most important job of my life. Nicole was in the first grade. I was walking her to her school bus and she abruptly stopped. Surprised, I turned around and saw a look of sadness and fear in her eyes, a look I had never seen on her face. She said to me “Mom, I don’t want to take the bus”. I asked why and she said “The kids are mean to me”. Nicole was a very social child and loved riding the school bus with the other children. She also had a strong personality, even at the age of six, so I was very surprised.  She went on to tell me that all the children told her she belonged at the back of the bus. I was confused because these were great kids that Nicole had known them all her life. Next, She said something that nearly floored me. She told me there were two paintings in the hall across from the principal’s office she told me that one painting showed a bus full of children with black kids sitting in the back and a caption said “Negros belong at the back of the bus”. The other picture was a yellow cafe with a sign on the door, “No Negros allowed”.  In a sate of disbelief, I took Nicole to school, walked to the hall outside of Principal’s office, and there they were, the two pictures just as Nicole had described.In that moment, my world turned upside down. Memories of my childhood living in Kentucky rose up in me. We were the only Black family living in a small town in Western Michigan, but I thought the days when this behavior was acceptable were long past. There was no way I was going to allow my daughter to suffer that pain and humiliation.

I went to work that day and quit my job. I told my teammates and the president of the company what had happened and that I had to take my daughter to a more diverse, inclusive environment.  Several weeks later we were off to Chicago. Herman Miller had found a win/win solution for me to keep my job, and live in Chicago. I kept my responsibilities and took on a special assignment to help the company develop minority suppliers. This allowed me to work from Chicago and commute to the corporate headquarters for meetings. My team stepped up and filled in the gaps, some were promoted because they took on more leadership responsibilities. This ended up being a win for us all.

Our values applied to our products and services as well as our people. The Eames lounge Chair and Ottoman was designed by Charles and Ray Eames and manufactured by Herman Miller in 1956. Setting the standard for elegance and comfort, it is considered among the most significant furniture designs of the 20th century and is in the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The Eames Lounge Chair was originally produced with a rosewood veneer. Way back In 1990 Herman Miller stopped using rosewood. Our value of environmental responsibility led us to believing that we were contributing to the decline of the Brazilian Rain Forest. We were far ahead of our time. The concept of a “Green Company” would not come into being until almost ten years after Herman Miller made this environmentally conscious decision. This was a very difficult and controversial decision to make from a design integrity standpoint, as well as a sales and marketing perspective. However, it was the right thing to do. The Government of Brazil now controls rosewood as an endangered species. Once again, we had the courage to be true to our values, and we were right.

Having the courage to include Family, Social and Environmental Responsibility in our values brought out the good in us - and the best in us. These set of values helped us to learn that we had the capacity to do good and do well! It helped us to see and understand the connections between people, families, communities and the environment. It helped us understand our responsibilities beyond profits. We became acutely aware that we were a part of a greater chain of events and a greater whole. Personally, it was exciting, beautiful and deeply fulfilling way to work.

LEADERSHIP – A Radical Departure

“Leadership is a serious meddling
             in other people’s lives”
                                               Max De Pree

The critical ingredient to Herman Miller’s success was a leadership philosophy that was rooted the basic belief that people are extraordinary, and capable of achieving remarkable things. We abandoned the traditional assumptions that people are lazy, can’t be trusted, and have limits to their growth. This had enormous implications for those of us who had leadership responsibilities. Our leadership and management decisions had to reflect our values and beliefs.

Our commitment to our vision and values resulted in great benefits to everyone who was a part of the Herman Miller family. We attracted the best and the brightest people – not because we paid the most, because of our commitment to the quality of life for all our stakeholders and our communities. People were proud to work at Herman Miller and like Peter Ducker always reminded us, our people became our greatest recruiters and public relations. Local governments and communities were constantly in pursuit of having Herman Miller expand into their communities. In the long run, we learned that leading with vision and values was not only the right thing to do, it made good business sense.

Leadership was an awesome responsibility. We understood our purpose and our power.  We understood the great good and the great harm we could do to people, families, communities and the environment. We were not just accountable to shareholders – we were accountable to a myriad of interwoven stakeholders. To become a leader at Herman Miller we had to unlearn almost everything we had been taught school. This was not easy. To move from seeing leadership as a status to embracing it as a service took a dramatic shift in perception. To help us make that transition and to remind us of our leadership responsibility, Max commission a sculpture of a Watercarrier created by Allan Houser, an Native American painter and modernist sculptor. He had it placed in the corporate center courtyard. Max had a small version of the sculpture placed outside the office of the CEO, as a symbol of our values and beliefs. The inscription read:

                           “The tribal watercarrier in this corporation 
                             is a symbol of the essential nature of all jobs, 
                            our interdependence, the identity of ownership 
                            and participation, the servanthood of leadership, 
                            and the authenticity of each individual.”

We came to understand, to build something beautiful, with a collection of people; all working together on a positive shared mission, vision and values was a highly effective, efficient and profitable way to work. Most important it was a deeply meaningful, exciting and even spiritual way to lead.

The magic of Herman Miller was its’ people and our leadership philosophy, which was born out of our core values. The values were the key ingredient - the yeast that helped everyone rise to the challenge. They were nonnegotiable and embodied all that is truly important in life. Our commitment was to treat people with dignity and respect and to create an environment worthy of people’s commitment. We struggled daily to align our words, actions and our decisions with our values and beliefs.  We made mistakes, we lost our way from time to time, however our values served as a powerful force that pulled us back on course. Collectively the people of Herman Miller created an extraordinary company that became  “A reference point for excellence, by almost any measure”. I finally understood the awesome responsibility of becoming – Vice President For People.

I was blessed to have worked at Herman Miller.  I experienced a very evolved form of leadership and saw the tremendous benefits of true democratic capitalism at work.  We were far ahead of our time. What Max calls “A Place of realized Potential” became a reality. A place I call, my Camelot!  Although many of us are no longer at Herman Miller we carry what we learned into our lives, our work and our communities; so the legacy lives on.

My dream is that leaders today come to understand how beautiful, meaningful and profitable leading with vision and values can be. Leaders of organizations, counties, communities and families don’t have to abandon their core values. The deep longing for love, the need to connect, to contribute our best and the need to be valued is what everyone feels. Leaders have the opportunity to create the conditions for “realized potential” – everyone can win in this enlightened approach to leading people.

We all feel (on some level) the timing in human evolution is right for this next stage of growth. The Herman Miller example and many others along our path and have given us a glimpse of what is possible when people commit to and live by their vision and values. It is time for us to live our dreams at work, at home and in our communities.

May all your beautiful hopes and dreams come true!

Michele
www.dreammakers.org