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When Andi Owen took over the Herman Miller furniture company in 2018, she didn’t expect to get caught up in politics. But these days, it seems no CEO is immune to culture wars.
Over the past year, Ms Owen, a former Gap leader, has had to appease a workforce shaken by the same polarizing forces that are straining the country. At its Michigan Battlefield State factory, wardrobe choices – from Make America Great Again hats to Black Lives Matter t-shirts – sparked arguments among employees. In response, Ms Owen attempted to maintain a business already battered by the pandemic and falling sales.
“We tried to create opportunities for people to have frank conversations, to get together and discuss the difficult topics of the day,” she said. “I don’t think these are new issues. But whether it’s race, inclusiveness, or what’s going on in the world today, these are all things you need to talk about.
At the same time, Ms Owen has guided 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 high-end retailer.
Ms. Owen attended Interlochen Arts Academy, a Michigan arts-based boarding school. It was there that she first discovered Herman Miller, who produced iconic pieces by famous mid-century designers such as Isamu Noguchi and Charles and Ray Eames, and modern office staples like the Aeron chair.
Ms. Owen then studied art history at the College of William and Mary and began working in retail. A job at The Gap saw him take on a series of executive roles at the retailer, culminating in his leadership of the Banana Republic brand, before joining Herman Miller.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Has obtaining a liberal arts degree had an impact on your career?
It has helped me in so many ways. I learned a lot about people. I learned a lot about history. I learned a lot about observation. I have always tackled any job I have ever had as a generalist and observer of human nature.
Some people would say I’m no good at anything. I’m sort of OK with a lot of things. And it’s okay. I surrounded myself with people much smarter than me. But I have a somewhat broader point of view and an experience that doesn’t necessarily lead me to think of one thing or another.
I had a mother who was an educator and a father who is this free-spirited musician. And all my mom told me was, “When you go to school, learn what you love. You will have plenty 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 never got an MBA
I applied and was accepted. I was in my late thirties and as I was talking to a woman at admissions she said, “This is great. We don’t have that many middle aged women interested in these programs because they all have families. And I was like, “Not me. I’m fine. ”And then, of course, I got pregnant and didn’t go.
You come to a point in your career where getting a Standard MBA is a bit of a waste of time, because you have learned too much along the way. But I went back and got an executive MBA at Harvard, which kind of filled the gap.
The Gap has obviously had its ups and downs. What has the company done well and what has gone wrong over the years?
Business and Economy
I was fortunate to be there for the really, really good years when the action split up every year. And I was there to watch the decline.
The Gap was at its best back when the Trusted Editor was important, when you played a role in helping people understand what they needed. We were very successful at the start. But when you are very successful and you don’t change, you are afraid. This ability to take risks – to think about how the business might be different, to reinvent itself from within – has become impossible. And a lot of great people were brought into the wood chipper to try and bring The Gap back.
When the digital revolution hit, I entered the online part of our business. And I remember one of my bosses saying to me, “No one will ever buy clothes online. It will be the biggest mistake of your career. What are you doing? ”That was really the way people thought back then.
We just haven’t changed fast enough. And we were really disconnected from the customer. When you trust a playbook that has been successful in the past and you don’t understand where your customer is going, that’s a disaster prescription.
How has your time at The Gap shaped your thinking about what you do at Herman Miller?
I interviewed a guy who became my digital head. He had worked in retail and he said, “Do you know what excites me the most about joining this industry? I feel like I’m going from landfill to inheritance.
I feel the same. These are products that you hope to pass on. With some of the Banana Republic cashmere sweaters that I have made, I hope someone brings them back. But I do know that the millions and millions of T-shirts that we have made are probably not passed on.
What happened when the pandemic hit and how did you manage to get out of it?
We had never closed our factories before, and we were there all of a sudden. We closed all our factories in 12 hours, and every day was a new lesson in crisis management.
There were nights where I sat down at the end of the day and shed a few tears because of it. The human toll of this pandemic has not only been the death toll, but the lives and jobs of people, entire industries wiped out. We capped at 400 layoffs and people who pulled out [about 5 percent of the work force], and we’ve done our best to keep that number where it is. But we also designed a new product at a time when we never thought we could. So it was a real balance between “Hey, this is really shitty right now” and “We’re going to get through it.”
Your core business has held up surprisingly well during the pandemic. Who buys so much office furniture right now?
Our international activity is strong. The parts of the world that emerged from the pandemic – parts of Asia, New Zealand – have changed.
Now the biggest questions from CEOs and space-planning folks are, “Hey, what’s the distributed workforce like? What should my new office look like? It certainly can’t be what it was. People don’t want employees to go back to what they used to be.
At first it was, “How can I make it safe? How to put barriers everywhere? Now the conversation has evolved into, “How do you make it an engaging environment?”
What are some of the answers to this question?
It is a fascinating variety. Financial companies are like, “We’re going back to exactly what it was. We are not going to change anything. And then some of the tech companies in Silicon Valley are like, “Who still needs an office?”
I am not sure that either of these is necessarily the answer. Along this continuum, most people land in a place of “Gosh, what are people missing?” Whether it’s innovation, creativity, or collaboration, how do you create environments where people can have this stuff? Depending on the industry, I think we’re going to see a bunch of different solutions over the course of that first year or two.
At Herman Miller, we take all of our office environments and use that time while we have people working remotely to completely renovate them. These are our own little test labs.
Herman Miller is not an inherently political company, so how do you handle a time like this, when there is so much resentment, including among your own employees?
We have to unify, we have to talk. We have to have respect and kindness and we have to listen. What happened on Capitol Hill was not correct. On the other hand, I have to make sure that we listen to each other and try to find commonalities.
Sometimes I long for the days when I was back in Berkeley, Calif., And I could walk the streets and everyone thought the same. But you know, everyone is in Michigan. So people on the right need to feel comfortable, and people on the left need to feel comfortable. This is a challenge as we become more and more divisive as a company. Sometimes you have to accept that you don’t agree because you are so far apart. But for us, it’s about encouraging respect and encouraging kindness.
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