"Your employees are someone's precious child"

What is great leadership? Bob Chapman studied this question as CEO and Chairman of Barry-Wehmiller, an industrial manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, which was founded in 1885. When Bob inherited the company in 1975 , it had a turnover of $20 million and a leadership model that fits the times: rigid, top-down, and driven by financial results and production efficiency. Over the decades, Bob has built an acquisition-driven strategy and a culture he calls "Truly Human Leadership." This has not only dramatically improved employee fulfillment, both in the workplace and beyond, but has also helped grow the company to approximately $3 billion in revenue.

Bob is a newly elected member of Ashoka's Entrepreneur-to-Entrepreneur Network, which brings together high-impact business entrepreneurs with the world's most powerful social entrepreneurs at Ashoka. We recently talked about his leadership journey.

Konstanze Frischen: Bob, you've built your business, your vision, around the culture of "Truly Human Leadership", which at its core pursues the intention of sending people home feeling fulfilled.< /p>

Bob Chapman: That's how it all started, with this very simple thought.

Frischen: Before I get into the details that describe this culture, let me ask you this: what were the circumstances that led you to come up with this idea?

Chapman: I started my career practicing traditional management, which I learned in business school and experienced in the work environment. The transformation occurred in three revelations. The first dates back to 1997. We acquired a company in South Carolina. I flew in and on the first day I was having coffee in the cafeteria before the office opened. It was March, and in March in South Carolina everyone was betting on college basketball. Everyone was talking about the college team that won, they were all having fun. And the closer it got to eight o'clock, the more I could see the pleasure coming out of their bodies. And I thought, "Why can't business be fun?"

Frischen: So what did you do?

Chapman: Well, the idea came from me to create workplace games that combine value creation with fun. My goal was just to have fun, but then orders also increased by 20%! So that was the first revelation. The second was in my church, watching my mentor give a sermon. I remember thinking, "What a privilege to be able to inspire all of these people to become the person they are meant to be." But then I realized that this church only had us for one hour a week. I told my wife, Cynthia, “At work, we have people to support us 40 hours a week. We are 40 times more powerful than our church to impact people's lives. As I walked out of that church that day, I realized that business could be the most powerful force for good in the world, if only we knew how to care for the people we have the privilege of leading.< /p>

Frischen: It's very powerful. What was the third revelation?

Chapman: A few years later, I was at a wedding and watched my friend walk his daughter down the aisle. Looking around I saw how in love everyone was, how proud the parents were. I have seen people consider these two young people as someone's precious child, about to be married. And I realized that, until then, I always saw the people in my organization as functions for my success. They were engineers, accountants, production workers. But that day, I thought of the thousands of people who worked for us, and I thought, "That's not a receptionist, that's not an engineer, that's not a salesman - he's someone's precious child, just like these two youngsters here." And I want to be able to tell their parents and loved ones that I have been a good steward of the deep responsibility entrusted to me.

Frischen: Here you are talking about family values, even the religious sphere. I bet you've seen it more than once that someone has come up to you and said, "Oh that's good, but we need to focus on money and profitability."

Chapman: First of all, we've surpassed Warren Buffett in the last 30 years. When people say to me, “How do you justify the cost of care? I tell them, "How do you justify not caring?" Most people in most workplaces do the bare minimum to get by because they don't feel valued. According to Gallup, three out of four people in this country are disengaged from what they do. If we had a machine tool in our factory that was only running at 25% capacity, we would fix it. Why do we accept this...