It’s About the People

Given his friendly and approachable nature and slightly self-deprecating sense of humor, upon first meeting Tim Chen, VP of International Business Development at HNI Corporation, one might be inclined to forget that he is a man of rather impressive personal and professional accomplishment.

Tim Chen explained that he is a big supporter of balancing personal and professional priorities.

However, it would behoove one not only to remember these facts, but also realize that Mr. Chen has some very powerful insights to share, and is more than happy to do just that. This was my experience recently as I joined Tim and marketing academy business director Mark Winkler for lunch at The Pit in downtown Iowa City.

As a family man with business-to-business marketing aspirations, I jumped at the opportunity to sit down with Tim, and I was most certainly not disappointed.

Tim was happy to answer all of my questions during our lunch, and I very much appreciated the insights he shared. Learning to balance personal and professional responsibility is an issue that remains a priority for me, and hearing Tim’s unique take on this age old dilemma was quite enlightening indeed.

It’s extremely hard, if not impossible, to separate your work life and your personal life, but Tim pointed out that the more you can set aside time where you’re only focused on one, and don’t have to worry about the other, the more effective you will be at both.

Tim’s perspective on gray areas in business struck me as particularly timely. In this post-WorldCom, post-Enron, post-Madoff world, no one would deny that a laser-like focus on the paramount importance of ethics in business is essential, both in academia and in the private sector.

If there is a weakness to this philosophy, however, it is that the constant emphasis on doing right and not doing wrong eventually creates the perception of a world in which these two opposing poles, these two extremes on a broad and ambiguous continuum, come to be perceived as the only two options.

Tim believes that people are the most important asset in a corporation.

It’s against this backdrop that I find Tim’s discussion of gray areas to be particularly useful. Between right and wrong, he reminded us, is a broad and often confusing area of gray.It is how we learn to understand and deal with the gray areas in business, and in life, that define us as marketers, business people, and human beings.

Later, during Tim’s presentation to the marketing academy, he delved further into these topics, and examined in greater detail Marketing’s vital importance to all facets of business. He reminded us that by encompassing such far-reaching and divergent topics as customer insight, strategy, R&D, margins, communications, and life cycle management, marketing is the “essential, fundamental business discipline.”

Perhaps most essential to Tim’s overall message was his discussion of the vital importance of the people in an organization. Our business strategy and tactics can be emulated, our products and processes can be copied, our distribution channels can be deciphered and duplicated and our advertising can be mimicked, but our people are unique.

It is how we engage, inspire, and cultivate greatness within the people in our organization that allows our organization to become great, and allows us to truly differentiate ourselves from our competition.