People-centric leadership philosophy - Barry-Wehmiller - since 1987, had a 15.

6% compound annual
return for investors (privately held), which compares with 5.4% average private company growth in
2013, (Forbes).

- (2014) sales stood at $2 billion. ('people first' concepts penetration to every level) (con:
accumulative processes requiring constant learning and innovation)
- Found that companies with strong character leadership teams bring home nearly five times
the amount to the bottom line compared with teams that just focus on getting the job done.
- Last year, Inc. magazine put it on its list of the 25 Most Audacious Companies for its culture.
- Surveys: 88% of workers don't feel their companies care about them, and the result is poor
morale, stress and low engagement. Solution: Have people become invested in the company,
and the success of the company beyond the scope of a pay cheque, “stop managing people like
objects and instead treat them like family, they will be motivated to create much greater value."
- decided that the only way to win was to acquire struggling firms he believed had products
with a better future if managed right.
- He had no financial resources or experience making acquisitions, so he became creative in
proposals. (In one case, he took an underperforming electronics unit that had $3 million in sales
and merged it with a similarly sized firm — and within three years the combo was bringing in
$37 million.)
- “When you represent a culture like ours, people bring their companies to us now because they
want that for their people and want to find a good steward to step in. You can’t do that with a
traditional private-equity firm.”
- “Things that sell every day, every week and every month,” he said, “in various price points and
different markets so we don’t put our company at risk.” (DIVERSIFY)
- Examination over impulse: look for opportunities where they are confident they can help.
- ENGAGEMENT: He set up fun contests that would incentivize everyone to be team players in
sales, result: 2X in sales
- Key to leadership practice: ask their team to articulate
o where they want to go,
o why they want to go there
o and when they get there, will you have taken your people to a better place
(creates buy-in and direction)

Central idea - deploy its culture-based turnarounds within acquisition companies (usually failing ones).
The idea: create a workplace culture that truly values and cares for employees, and the rest of the
transformation will take care of itself.

- No Layoff
- gives his Truly Human Leadership principles three to five years to take off
- What would it mean to accept responsibility for employee lives as part of his corporate
leadership?
- Interpreting data through a human lens (the “intangible” metric)
- Understanding that value begets a positive or negative feedback loop dependent on the
recognition or personal responsibility (embraced the idea where personal chance to make
 thier role better, where ‘what you think’ matters, creates a ripple affect in generating feeling
of value which continues past the work place into the home and inner life)
- Mission Statement: “We measure success by the way we touch the lives of people.”

Redefining the Metrics of ‘Success’ -  human revolution instead of industrial revolution (created the
brokenness and disconnect) we’re now feeling, because it was never founded on the principles of
human dignity and human thriving. It was never about creating meaning and purpose. It was around
economic wealth through mass production and industrializing the country. It began around economic
greed.(Replacing the 80s mindset of management as “the manipulation of others for your success”)