Being & Connection

When talking of Being and connection, I am reminded of an encounter involving Jeffrey Swartz when he was the COO of Timberland, an outdoor clothing and goods company. In 1989, Swartz had been invited to speak at a halfway house, where he encountered a struggling teenager who asked him what he did for a living. When Swartz responded that he was a COO, the teen said he did not understand what that meant, or what he did. Swartz then clarified that he was responsible for the global execution of strategy for a large company.

Then it was Swartz’s turn to ask the teenager what he did. “I work at getting well” was the quiet answer. “That was an answer that sort of trumped mine,” he later said. This simple and direct exchange between one human being and another was an epiphany for Swartz. A chance meeting with a troubled teen had reconnected Swartz not just to the teenager’s humanity but to his own.

Swartz returned to Timberland determined to make the company a force for human good. As CEO, he built a company that transformed its industry, generated $1.5 billion in annual revenues, and became a corporate icon for doing well while doing good. In 2011, Timberland was acquired by VF Corporation for $2 billion at a healthy $43 per share.

In present day business, examples like this are much more the exception than the rule. If business leaders recognise, trust, and act upon their latent connections to others as Jeffrey Swartz did, this doesn’t necessarily have to be the case.