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When Robert Lane, ’74, took over as chairman and CEO of Deere & Company, he moved his desk from the grand location of his office to get closer to visitors. “It sat among beautiful artwork, but it kept the person coming in separate from the person sitting behind this desk.”
Lane and Patricia Woertz, CEO and president of Archer Daniels Midland Company, spoke with Jeff Greenfield during a taping of Public Television’s “CEO Exchange,” WTTW National Productions’ program for PBS, before a live audience of more than 400 students and business executives at Mandel Hall on the University of Chicago campus February 19.
Greenfield told Lane that moving the desk seemed to symbolize the approach Lane took to turning around Deere. “You looked at this company and said, ‘We’ve got to change it. We’re not maximizing what we can do here,’” Greenfield said to him. “You were down on the factory floor, working with people.”
Most managers recognize the importance of each member of their staff, Lane said. “Every individual has inherent worth. Dealing with people in that way gave me this opportunity to explain what we needed to do,” he said. “We had a great company, but we didn’t have a great business. We had to pull this great work force together and make the business itself as great as the products.”
Lane told his employees that Deere was “not a family” for a deliberate purpose, he said. “The company has been around so many years that at one time it did have a family feel to it,” he said. “I tell people that if you’re not pulling your weight in a family, you’re still invited to Thanksgiving dinner. But if you’re not pulling your weight here, you’re not part of the team.”
He said today’s tractors are mobile information machines guided by satellites. “You have to put the seed in the exact place. GPS allows you a much more precise procedure over a long day.” Deere customers may sit in their tractors to oversee their work, but they don’t ever have to touch the wheel, Lane said. “Often they’re on the Internet selling their grain on the futures market,” he said.
Woertz said the transition from Chevron to ADM was easy in some respects but required preparation in others. “Chevron had more than 25,000 employees worldwide in 180 countries,” Woertz said. “We had many of the same strategic longer-term issues, so I felt I could draw on a lot of that executive leadership and negotiating experience.” However, Woertz had to adjust to her new relationship with ADM’s board of directors, she said. “It was important for me to read up on a lot of governance issues,” Woertz said.
ADM applies its leadership and management practices in the global market, Woertz said. “We have expanded to about 60 countries and our objective is to have our leaders be vocal and diverse by having an American leader operating in Hamburg and a German leader operating in China. Having that diversity is one part of gaining that cultural experience. Some of that is purposeful in moving certain leaders around.”
The episode, which will be broadcast May 3 at 9 p.m., is part of a 10-episode series that will be shown on WTTW on Thursdays beginning April 5.
--Phil Rockrohr