Reference no: EM132219058

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The Day the Millwright Died

After reading “The Millwright Died”, discuss the following: If the Millwright was one of your employees, in what ways could you have really known him? What questions would you ask him to determine his gifts? How could you have polished and liberated those gifts in your business?

My father is ninety-six years old. He is the founder of Herman Miller, and much of the value system and impounded energy of the company, a legacy still drawn on today, is part of his contribution. In the furniture industry of the 1920’s the machines of most factories were not run by electric motors, but by pulleys from a central drive shaft. The central drive shaft was run by the steam engine. The steam engine got its steam from the boiler. The boiler, in our case, got its fuel from the sawdust and other waste coming out of the machine room-a beautiful cycle. The Millwright was the person who oversaw that cycle and on whom the entire activity of the operation depended. He was a key person. One day the millwright died. My father, being a young manager at the time, did not particularly know what he should do when a key person died, but thought he ought to go visit the family. He went to the house and was invited to join the family in the living room. There was some awkward conversation-the kind with which many of us are familiar. The widow asked my father if it would be all right if she read aloud some poetry. Naturally, he agreed. She went into another room, came back with a bound book, and for many minutes read selected pieces of beautiful poetry. When she finished, my father commented on how beautiful the poetry was and asked who wrote the poems; she replied that her husband, the millwright, was the poet. It is now nearly sixty years since the millwright died, and my father and many of us at Herman Miller continue to wonder: was he a poet who did millwright’s work, or was he a millwright who wrote poetry? In our effort to understand corporate life, what is it we should learn from this story? In addition to all of the ratios and goals and parameters and bottom lines, it is fundamental that leaders endorse a concept to persons. This begins with an understanding of the diversity of people’s gifts and talents and skills. Understanding and accepting diversity enables us to see that each of us is needed. It also enables us to begin to think about being abandoned to the strengths of other, of admitting that we cannot know or do everything. The simple act of recognizing diversity in corporate life helps us to connect the great variety of gifts that people bring to the work and service of the organization. Diversity allows each of us to contribute in a special way, to make our special gift a part of the corporate effort. Recognizing diversity helps us to understand the need we have for opportunity, equity, and identity in the workplace. Recognizing diversity gives us the chance to provide meaning, fulfillment, and purpose, which are not to be relegated solely to private life any more than are such things as love, beauty, and joy. It also helps us to understand that for many of us, there is a fundamental difference between goals and rewards. In the end, diversity is not only real in our corporate groups but, as with the millwright, it frequently goes unrecognized. Or as another poet, Thomas Gray, put it, talent may go unnoticed and unused. “Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And wasted its sweetness on the desert air.” When we think about leaders and the variety of gifts people bring to corporations and institutions, we see that the art of leadership lies in polishing and liberating and enabling those gifts.