When Andi Owen took over furniture company Herman Miller in 2018, she did not expect to be involved in politics. But today, it seems that no chief executive is safe from cultural wars.
Last year, Owen, a former executive at the Gap, had to appease a workforce shaken by the same polarizing forces that are pressing the country. On the floor of his Michigan battlefield factory, the wardrobe choices – from Make America Great Again hats to Black Lives Matter t-shirts – sparked discussions among employees. In response, Ms. Owen tried to hold together a company already tested by the pandemic and falling sales.
“We try to create opportunities for people to have frank conversations, to get together and discuss the difficult issues of the day,” she said. “I don’t think these are new problems. But whether it’s about race or inclusion, or what’s going on in the world today, these are things you have to talk about. “
At the same time, Owen has led Herman Miller through a pandemic that has closed offices around the world – an existential threat to a company that makes office furniture and owns Design Within Reach, a luxury retailer.
Ms. Owen went to Interlochen Arts Academy, a Michigan boarding school focused on the arts. It was there that she learned about Herman Miller, which produces iconic pieces from famous mid-century designers like Isamu Noguchi and Charles and Ray Eames, and modern office pieces like the Aeron chair.
Mrs. Owen then studied art history at the College of William and Mary and started working in retail. A job at The Gap led her to a series of senior positions at the retailer, culminating in her leadership at the Banana Republic brand, before she moved to Herman Miller.
This interview was condensed and edited for clarity.
Did getting a liberal arts degree impact your career?
This helped me in many ways. I learned a lot about people. I learned a lot about history. I learned a lot about observation. I have always addressed any work I have ever had as a generalist and observer of human nature.
Some people would say that I am not good at anything. I’m fine with many things. And everything is fine. I surrounded myself with people who are much smarter than me. But I have a slightly broader point of view and an experience that doesn’t necessarily make me think one thing or the other.
I had a mother who was an educator and a father who is a free spirit musician. And all my mother said to me was, “When you go to school, learn what you love. You will have a lot of time for a career and it won’t matter anyway. “So, I really spent time doing what I loved, and I think it was an advantage.
Unlike many CEOs, you’ve never done an MBA
In fact, I signed up and was accepted. I was almost 30, and while talking to a woman on admission, she said, “It’s great. We don’t have many middle-aged women interested in these programs because they all have families ”. And I said, “I don’t. I’m fine. “And of course I got pregnant and I didn’t go.
You get to a certain point in your career where getting a standard MBA is a waste of time because you’ve learned a lot along the way. But I went back and did an executive MBA at Harvard, which sort of filled in the gaps.
The Gap obviously had its ups and downs. What did the company get right and what went wrong over the years?
Business and Economy
I was lucky to be there in the very, very good years, when the shares were dividing each year. And I was there to watch the decline.
The Gap was at its best when the trusted publisher was important, when you played a role in helping people understand what they needed. We were very successful from the beginning. But when you are very successful and do not change, you are afraid. This ability to take risks – to think about how the company could be different, to reinvent itself from the inside – has become impossible. And many excellent people were put in the wood chipper trying to bring The Gap back.
When the digital revolution came, I went to the online part of our business. And I remember one of my bosses saying to me, “No one is ever going to buy clothes online. This is going to be the biggest mistake of your career. What are you doing? “That was really how people thought back then.
We just don’t change fast enough. And we were really out of contact with the customer. When you trust a manual that has been successful in the past and you don’t understand where your customer is going, it’s a recipe for disaster.
How did your time at The Gap shape your thinking about what you do at Herman Miller?
I interviewed a guy who became my digital boss. He had worked in retail and said: “Do you know what I’m most excited about coming to this sector? I feel that I am leaving the landfill to make family heirlooms ”.
I feel the same way. These are products that you hope to distribute. With some of the Banana Republic cashmere sweaters I made, I hope someone will deliver them. But I know that the millions and millions of shirts we made are probably not being broadcast.
What happened when the pandemic struck, and how did you find a way out of it?
We had never closed our factories before, and there we were suddenly. We closed all of our factories in 12 hours, and each day there was a new lesson in crisis management.
There were nights when I sat down at the end of the day and shed some tears because of it. The human tribute to this pandemic was not just the death toll, but also people’s lives and jobs, entire industries destroyed. We limit 400 layoffs and people who have chosen to leave [about 5 percent of the work force], and we did our best to keep that number where it is. But we also designed a new product in times we never imagined we could. So it’s been a real balance of, “Hey, now it really sucks” and, “We’re going to get over this.”
Its core business has held up surprisingly well during the pandemic. Who’s buying so much office furniture now?
Our international business is strong. The parts of the world that emerged from the pandemic – certain parts of Asia, New Zealand – moved on.
Now, the biggest questions that CEOs and people planning the space have are: “Hey, how is the distributed workforce? What should my new office look like? ”It certainly cannot be what it was. People don’t want employees to go back to what they were.
In the beginning it was: “How do I make it safe? How do I place barriers everywhere? ”Now the conversation has evolved into:“ How do I make it an attractive environment? ”
What are some of the answers to that question?
It is a fascinating variety. Financial companies say: “We are going back to exactly what it was. We will not change much. ”And then some of the tech companies in Silicon Valley asked,“ Who needs an office again? ”
I’m not sure that any of these are necessarily the answer. Throughout this continuum, most people are landing in a position of, “Wow, what do people miss?” So, be it innovation, creativity or collaboration, how do you create environments where people can have that kind of thing? Depending on the industry, I think we will see many different solutions in the first year or two.
At Herman Miller, we are taking all of our office environments and using that time while we have people working remotely to completely renovate them. They are our own small test labs.
Herman Miller is not an inherently political company, so how do you deal with a time like this, when there is so much grudge, even among your own employees?
We have to come together, we have to talk. We have to have respect and kindness and we have to listen. What happened at Capitol was not OK. On the other hand, I need to make sure that we are listening to each other and trying to find something in common.
Sometimes I look forward to the days when I was back in Berkeley, California, and I could walk down the street and everyone thought the same way. But you know, everyone is in Michigan. So you need to make the people on the right feel comfortable and the people on the left feel comfortable. This is a challenge as we become more and more divisive as a society. Sometimes, you have to agree to disagree because they are too far apart. But for us, it is about encouraging respect and encouraging kindness.