The end of January brought a few leadership changes at Kimball International.
Kourtney Smithsucceeded Kevin McCoyas President, National Office Furniture, and will continue to serve as a Vice President of Kimball International, Inc. Secondly, Kathy Siglerwill succeed Kourtney as President, Kimball Hospitality, and with that promotion, Kathy will now also serve as a Vice President of Kimball International, Inc.
We spoke with the team at Kimball International to see what’s in store for both National Office Furniture and Kimball Hospitality under the new leadership. After 2½ months on the job, both women are hitting the ground running in their new roles, and they’re not wasting any time.
At National, Smith and her team are continuing an aggressive scan of current and new product categories. The major shift toward ancillary, along with a shrinking systems category, is laying more pressure onto brands like National.
“National has never had a systems product – we’ve always been in ancillary,” said Smith. “Now, we’re all fighting for more of the same pie.”
“We’re looking way out in the future because the speed of change is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. We’re finding new ways of reinvention, thinking more creatively beyond traditional casegoods and seating. It’s got to be more than that; we can’t just have great looking products. We’re figuring out what new value streams might look like, including from an acquisitions standpoint.”
We’ll see some of that new portfolio at NeoCon in June; visitors can expect a more residential and eclectic feel in the showroom, along with new tech additions.
At Kimball Hospitality, Sigler and her team are rolling with a market that is shifting just as fluidly and frequently as the workplace market.
“In hospitality, data and technology are driving very meaningful change. There’s more connection and more personalization,” said Sigler. “We’re reinventing ourselves because the market constancy reinvents itself. Our customers make it very difficult to predict their wants, even in the next few years. Our mission is to become that concierge for a higher-level experience. D’style is a powerhouse in the public space, and it’s a high-end brand that will help support that.”
Kimball Hospitality will continue down a path first laid out by Smith, who most recently served as President of the brand. Kimball Hospitality’s acquisition of hospitality furnishings brand D’styleis a big piece of the strategy.
“The D’style acquisition was a great opportunity to extend their footprint beyond the guest room into the public space,” said Smith. “The changes happening in hospitality are very similar to the transformation we saw in the workspace. People are not in the guest room anymore, but in the common spaces. Whether they’re interacting or not, people want to be around other people.”
Smith and Sigler both started around the same time as sales coordinators at Kimball Healthcare, a position they say was a great place to start at a company and develop a working knowledge of many aspects of the business. Each moved through and up the Kimball organization, taking on more responsibilities and becoming the “special projects person” in their departments.
“Always learning and always being curious are qualities that work well with leadership,” noted Smith. “Being that special project person lets you build your skillset. And at Kimball, we have breadth; there are three brands and every area of work. You get the opportunities to reinvent yourself and feel fulfilled in your career.”
Kimball’s leadership development programs and succession planning form a culture of natural positive growth at both an individual and organizational level – setting aside gender differences.
40% of all managers at Kimball are female. Two out of three of Kimball’s brand presidents are female; four out of nine top senior executives are female; and three out of seven outside board of directors’ members are female. Those numbers are much higher than national averages.
“Companies are continuing to struggle to get diversity,” said Don Van Winkle,“We’re pleased that we’ve been able to create a space where anyone who wants to move up, can. Kourtney and Kathy happen to be female, but we don’t promote someone simply because they’re female. Instead, we give everyone opportunities to grow and get to those positions. We give them the support to grasp those opportunities, and it’s up to them whether they do so. Kourtney and Kathy just flat-out earned their positions.”
“Women in Leadership: Why It Matters”, a study done by the Rockefeller Organization, offers insight into the current conditions of women in leadership.
“The United States ranks first in women’s educational attainment on the World Economic Forum’s 2016 Global Gender Gap Index of 144 countries,” the Rockefeller study reports. “But it ranks 26thin women’s economic participation and opportunity, and 73rdin women’s political empowerment. Women hold just 4% of the leadership positions in Fortune 500 companies (21 out of 500) – worse even than women’s current representation in the Senate (20% – an all-time high).”
“It has been estimated that, at the current rate of change, it will take until 2085 for women to reach parity with men in key leadership roles in the United States.…even when pitted against outlandish goals, one in four Americans say that it’s more likely that humans will colonize Mars (26%) and four in 10 think that space travel will be routine just like air travel for tourism (40%) within their lifetime than half of Fortune 500 CEOs will be women (vs. 74% and 60%, respectively).”
Placing a balance of men and women in leadership positions may happen as a natural process at Kimball, but it doesn’t for many companies. Organizations would do well to pay attention to the benefits triggered by making sure women are equally represented.
“Women role models are uniquely important – among those who have had mentors that supported them in the workplace, majorities of men and women alike say their mentor was the same gender as them, suggesting the need for, and potential influence of, more women in top positions,” reports the Rockefeller study. “Specifically, among women who had mentors in the workplace, nearly two-thirds (63%) say that their mentor was another woman, rising to 72% among millennial women who have had mentors, while just 37% had male mentors. That flips among men, with more than three-quarters (77%) having had male mentors (vs. 23% female mentors).”
Sigler says she tapped into a hybrid mix of formal and informal mentoring at Kimball.
“This company has always been about reinventing itself,” she said. “Your career trajectory is rarely linear. For my first 10 years, I worked in sales and customer facing roles, and at one point I recognized that I needed to balance my experience and my perspective. I knew I needed the operations background;that I didn’t have the experience I needed to get to the next level. I took a big step back in order to eventually move up.”
She switched over to the operations side, taking a master scheduler position and movedup quickly from there.
“There’s a culture of trust at Kimball,” said Sigler. “You’ve got to have a lot of trust in the company, and you also have to come to the table with it yourself. I’ve been offered a lot of broad experiential learning. And Kimball lets you go at your own pace, however fast or slow you feel you can move through.”
In addition to balancing out pay equity, Equities.com also reports that having female leaders translates to having stronger mentorship opportunities for all employees.
“It is generally agreed that without representation of those who have achieved something before, it’s hard for others to move forward,” reports equities.com. “It’s easier to climb the mountain when you see that someone else has done it.”
Smith’s mother and father both worked for Kimball. Her history and love for the company runs deep, and her leadership style reflects it.
“I’ve always felt that I was recognized for my abilities and my contributions…My approach has always been, seeking to understand,” said Smith. “I like for decision making to be really informed. I try to strike a healthy balance of fact and intuition. You need to have different views, and you need to learn about the personalities of the people on your team. I try very hard to get to know people, particularly once you get up to a certain level in your career, it can be easy to lose that connection. I seek many voices. The more people you can involve along the way, the more success you’ll see – immediately.”
We couldn’t agree more. Smith and Sigler, and their respective teams, have a bright future ahead. We wish them the best of luck!