HNI Corporation Leadership Essay

The leadership at every level believes in the vision and mission at HNI Corporation. This is attributed to HNI has only changed their senior leadership three times in 60 years and by doing so it has maintained the vision and values of the HNI culture. According to Glamuzina, Developed leadership must find a proper way of expressing the mission and transferring it in order to inspire followers with the goal of increasing overall effectiveness of the company (2015). The latest rendition of the vision and mission statement was created once HNI merged with HON Industries and represents much more than a traditional mission. It represents the very foundation of our corporate culture.

WE WILL BE PROFITABLE
The vision of HNI Corporation encompasses

how the Corporation its products, members and stake holders. The vision statement is that the members are dedicated to creating long term values for all of our stakeholders, to exceeding our customer expectations, and to make our company a great place to work. HNI will always treat each other, as well as customers, suppliers, shareholders, and our communities, with fairness and respect. The success of HNI depends upon business simplification, rapid continuous improvement, and innovation in everything that we do, individual and collective integrity, and the relentless pursuit of many long standing beliefs.

WE WILL CREATE LONG-TERM VALUE FOR SHAREHOLDERS
We will be profitable is one of the beliefs of HNI Corporation.

HNI will pursue mutually profitable relationships with customers and suppliers. Only when HNI achieves an adequate profit can the other elements of the vision be realized. HNI believes in building in the future of the town that they are headquartered in by working with local lean suppliers to build a relationship with and to help promote growth in the

community.

WE WILL PURSUE PROFITABLE GROWTH
HNI believes in creating long term value for the stakeholders by earning financial returns significantly greater than our cost of capital and pursuing profitable growth opportunities. HNI has safeguarded its shareholders equity by maintaining a strong balance sheet to allow flexibility in responding to a continuously changing market and business environment. HNI has evolved from a traditional office furniture manufacture and expanded in the ever changing collaborative seating and open concept furniture for Universities and Colleges to use in student centers and for large corporations to use in a collaborative environment.

WE WILL BE A SUPPLIER OF QUALITY PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
Another of HNI’s visions is to provide reliable products and services of high quality and brand value to our end users. The products and services that we create exceed our customers’ expectations and enable our distributors and HNI to make a fair profit. A major hurdle that HNI faces is that they do not directly sell products and services directly to the end user. HNI uses a network of dealers and distributors to sell deliver and install our product. HNI is actively involved with the struggles of our dealer network to ensure that we are doing everything possible to maintain a healthy working relationship.

WE WILL BE A GREAT PLACE TO WORK
HNI pursues a participative environment and support a culture that encourages and recognizes excellence, active involvement, and ongoing learning, and contributions of each member that seeks out and values diversity; and that attracts and retains the most capable people who work safely, are motivated, and are devoted to making HNI and the members successful. As a motivator HNI offers an 80% tuition reimbursement to members that seek out a degree in a related field in HNI. This ranges from business, marketing, engineering and management. HNI believes in investing in their members for the future of the organization and its members.

WE WILL BE A RESPONSIBLE CORPORATE CITIZEN
HNI conducts its business in a way that sustains the well-being of society, our environment, and the economy in which we live and work. They follow ethical and legal business practices. HNI supports our volunteer efforts and provides charitable contributions so that we can actively participate in the civic, cultural, educational, environmental, and governmental affairs of our society.

TO OUR STAKEHOLDERS
When HNI is appreciated by its members, favored by its customers, supported by its suppliers, respected by the public, and admired by its shareholders, this vision is fulfilled.

At the top of the leadership chain for HNI Corporation is our leader that created our vision and mission statement, Stan Askren.

Facing growing competition Stan had to become a transformational leader by integrating companies that are not the traditional office furniture roots. Since 2003, Stan has served as CEO of HNI Corporation which is now comprised of six companies plus HON International which markets products outside North America. Allsteel, the Gunlocke Company and Holga served the contract furnishings market. The HON Company and BPI Inc. made and sold middle-market office furnishings. Hearth Technologies comprised of Heatilator, Heat-N-Glo, Aladdin Hearth Products and Hearth Services Inc. By integrating these companies HNI is able to leverage similar operations to maximize cost and efficiencies to be able to give our customers the best cost possible in very competitive

market.

The traits and characteristics needed to be an effective team leader are shown in our CEO. According to Glamuzina, leadership is defined as a social interactive process between the leader and its followers in course of which the leader, through the activities of setting direction, aligning people and motivating followers, attains the goals of the organization (2015). Every time Stan speaks about the state of the business and the future outlook for corporate segments, he is always charismatic as he inspires and motivates the members of HNI with an inspired vision on the outlook of the business. Stan is always able to influence his subordinates with HNI with the powerful messages that he sends, not just in speeches that he gives, but in everyday conversations that he has with members. Stan is also able to build bonds with members and adapt their vision of the Corporation into the mission of his agenda. Stan is able to articulate his message in a way that always promotes the future state of the organization and challenges HNI’s members to aggressively seek out the goals delivered in the message. Stan expresses self confidence in his messages and instills the vision and values of the organization and himself in all of his messages. By inspiring, motivating and sharing his vision and values, Stan is able to instill confidence in the members of HNI.

HNI is comprised of different levels of leadership that require some positions to be transactional and other positions to be transformational. As I have mentioned before our CEO is a transformational leader as he is constantly monitoring the market and makes changes accordingly. There are many leadership positions within HNI Corporation that range from the Director of Operations to Production Managers that require a mix of transactional leadership and transformational leadership styles. As the leadership drops down the pyramid the leaders become more of a transactional leader as their daily tasks are more of a routine with driving production output, ensuring quality standards are met and a safe work place is being practiced. The lower level leaders such as Production Managers work daily with Production Team Leads and Utilities to ensure that the daily needs are met for production output. They work together planning scheduling capacities that are driven by averaging daily output and schedule cross training functions that are needed to meet spikes in customer demand. The Production Managers also speak with the members on a regular basis to talk about the future state of the business and how they contribute to the progress that is being made. They also talk about the concerns of the members and how their needs can be met. This usually leads to small wins that show the members that the leadership is engaged in their needs and making improvements based on their input. According to Watkins, it is crucial to get early wins, but it is also important to secure them in the right way (2003). Making changes just for the sake of change can lead to a disaster and lead the employees in the wrong direction.

Leaders within HNI use the five source of power: reward, expert, legitimate, referent and coercive (Weiss, 2015). Many of the leaders are able to use legitimate power due to the positions they hold within the organization to get members actively involved in any changes being made. Not all of the members in the organization are receptive to this type of power and often times there is a need to combine legitimate power with expert power. This combination is displayed when a leader that holds an authoritative position uses their professional expertise in a particular field to convey the message in a way that the members will be receptive to the thoughts and challenges of the changes. This combination makes the members more receptive to the changes that are being made.

Reward power is often used within HNI to seek out competitive goals between members by challenging them to hit a metric that is not easily attained by providing them with a reward if they hit the goal. An example I would give is the quality bonus that is used within HNI. If the members maintain the level of quality or improve over the previous month, each member is given a $100 bonus on their paycheck for the hard work. Members are also encouraged to use the MI Idea process at HNI. This process is a “member implemented” process that rewards members with a ticket that they can turn in for prizes at the end of each month for each improvement that they implement. The MI Idea process gets members actively involved in the decision making for the improvements within their respective area.

Many of the leaders with HNI display referent power in their charismatic leadership style. Many of the members are receptive to this type of leadership as they are easily motivated by a leader that influences by trust rather than fear (Weiss, 2015).

Coercive power is also used when members do not follow the policies and procedures at HNI. This tactic is used to coach and discipline members in hopes that they will become aligned with the vision and values of the organization. An example of this is the attendance policy that HNI uses. Each member is allowed to call off of work 9 times within a rolling calendar year before they are terminated. Once the members use 4 attendance credits they are spoken to by the production manager as a first level warning. When a member reaches 6 attendance credits used the member is again brought in not only to talk about their attendance, but to see if there are any issues that the member is having at work that are contributing to their attendance. If a member reaches 8 attendance credits used the member is pulled into the office one last time and is notified that if they miss one more day they will be terminated. Once the member reached 9 attendance credits the member is terminated due to a violation in the attendance policy that is set for all members.

If I was the CEO for HNI Corporation I would not change anything. According to Voet, the implementation of leadership change is dependent on the characteristics of the leader (2015). I believe that I have the right characteristics, but I also feel that HNI’s vision, values and mission are aligned with their members in the same way they are aligned with our customers. It is the high standards that our members are held to that drive the evolution of change required to meet the growing demand of our customers. The culture at HNI involves the members in the changes being made and actively engages them with motivating tools such as the MI Idea program.