Working on the future of work: Ron Martere

An emphasis on “work, workers, workplace” helps Steelcase focus on the business office of the future, says Ron Martere, vice president and leader of the company’s North Business Group. The 1987 Harbert graduate expects a hybrid model – work in the office and at home – to become even more common as businesses transition from pandemic operations into a changed marketplace.

Transcript

Narrator:

Welcome to the Harbert College of Business Podcast, with your hosts, Sarah Gascon and Currie Dyess. Today's guest is Ron Martere, a 1987 Harbert graduate. He is the Vice President at Steelcase, and leads the company's North Business Group.

Sarah Gascon:

Welcome to the show, War Eagle.

Ron Martere:

War Eagle.

Sarah:

So great to have you. How did you find your way to Steelcase?

Ron Martere:

It was a long journey. I graduated from Harbert in 1987, International Business degree, and had a great experience there. I was actually on an ROTC scholarship at Auburn. I wasn't really looking for a job post-graduation, I was going to be in the Army full-time, which I was for five years, most of that in Europe. And I always had aspirations to live and work in Europe, and was able to do that through the Service. When I left the Service, I was fortunate enough to find a company that actually sent me back to Germany to work for three years. That was exciting for me, I got to use my degree. And, it was a smaller company.

I did that for a few years, and then ended up following an Army buddy of mine to Palo Alto, California. He was involved in a startup company with another Army buddy. And, so we were all single at the time and could pick up roots and just do our thing and explore ventures, and I did that after a couple of years until money ran out. And, I found myself living in the Bay area at the time and looking for my next thing. And, what I found out about myself was I did enjoy larger organizations, and I certainly enjoyed the international part of business. And Steelcase was a great fit for me. They're a global company, and I was able to join their Global Accounts Group, actually 1999, and I've been there ever since.

Currie Dyess:

According to the Census Bureau, there are approximately 6 million US firms with about 500 of those being older than 100 years. So, less than 1%, obviously. Steelcase is one of those, and we were curious, how does Steelcase continue to come up with the next big thing and remain relevant, even through multiple social, cultural, and economic cycles?

Ron Martere:

Yeah, great question. We are a 100-year-old company, but if you talk to our leaders, what you hear is we're really a series of five 20-year-old companies. The reason that is, that companies don't last, it's ideas that last. And Steelcase has always been very engaged in research, and gleaning insights from that research, and thinking about what's next and try to solve for what's next in a unique way. And we've been very fortunate enough to do that several times over the last 100 years, and we think we're at a moment right now where that what's next is the hybrid workplace, transforming into this hybrid workplace. And so, we think that's a big thing about what's next.

Sarah:

Is there something scary about that what's next, because it does like there's been such a huge shift over the past couple of years with both working, figuring out how to work from home, and then being able to work from home, and then now coming back into the office?

Ron Martere:

Yeah, certainly. And what I would say is it's very important for organizations to diversify their business. And, we certainly do most of our in office, but we also do a lot in learning institutions, such as Auburn. I was very fortunate to call Auburn a client. We do a lot in healthcare. And we certainly are doing more work from home, and that really went crazy during the pandemic. And, we definitely see creating great work-from-home experiences as a growth area for our company moving forward.

Currie:

Ideas seem to grow on trees with every single person you meet. And you had mentioned that you were able to come up with ideas in each of these 20-year cycles. Implementing ideas is much more difficult. How is it that you're able to come up with relevant ideas, just to touch back on that question a minute ago?

Ron Martere:

So we've been associated with a company called IDEO for 25 years, and if you ever look up IDEO they're a fascinating company, an industrial design company. I think they came up with the first mouse for Apple. They [inaudible 00:04:41] a lot of interesting work. We learned a lot from that, in terms of thinking through potential ideas. And, we've really adopted this critical thinking model throughout our company where we say, "It's okay to spend a lot of time in the think phase." A lot of the times, and that sounds a little maybe elementary, but the reality is, a lot of times because of pressures for financial results and so forth, companies move quickly into, "Hey, that's a great idea. Let's get it funded, let's move. We think we can make money." And you find that only way too late in the game, that that really wasn't the best idea.

And so, if you think about that whole process from think, through point of view, to plan to implement, and then implement, we want to spend most of our time in the think phase, really poking at, "Is it really a good idea?" We spend a ton of time pressure testing that, so then when we get to point of view, about whether a service or a product, we're pretty confident that it's going to be one that's going to be successful. I will say, we haven't always been successful. And, our previous CEO actually wrote an article in Harvard Business Review on this topic. And he really profiled two products that we launched in almost in the same timeframe. One was wildly successful, and one wasn't.

That was what really propelled us into this notion of let's spend more time thinking through. There's an art to thinking. It involves research, it involves diverse points of view. It really is, like I said, pressure testing the idea before you get to implement. Once you get to implement with a great idea, we're pretty confident that we can do that pretty well because we believe in the idea so much.

Sarah:

When you say that, it sounds similar to how Disney operates with their Imagineers. They have a great group of Imagineers from 20-year-olds to 80-year-olds that are sitting around just throwing ideas, at least that's what I envision. Is that kind of how you all are in this think space?

Ron Martere:

There's some of that. We have a group called Workspace Futures. So our research really is in three big buckets. It's work, workers, and workplace. An we want to look at the nature sure of work and how that's evolving. And right now, we all know it's evolving in a very interesting way. We're distributed, some people are at home, some people are in the office. It's more digital. We're on video more. There's the whole host of things that are happening with work. We want to look at workers, so demographics, expectations about work, the relationship between people and the organization, and then how all of that manifests itself into workplace, like the physical space, whether that is in, at home, whether that's in the office itself.

And so, when we think about ideas, we glean those ideas from insights from our research. We don't pay people just to sit around in a big room and come up with wild ideas, we want to make sure it's in the context of what we believe is our unique mission statement or our value proposition and what we believe in. And from that, we generate a lot of ideas.

Currie:

And how do you create a work experience and plan an office design that allows people to do their best work and maximize the potential of the team?

Ron Martere:

That's kind of where we are right now, which is an interesting time in workplace design. So thinking about the... I think you're referring to the office, the actual workplace?

Currie:

Sure.

Ron Martere:

Yeah, we do believe it is really this thoughtful consideration of what people need, what the organization needs. We believe it's a design that thinks about culture, IT, and space together, because it's not just designing an office that looks great. If the cultural work hasn't been done, if the IT infrastructure is isn't there to really, let's say, allow for flexibility or choice and control, which are big factors right now in workplace design, then it won't be successful. So really, to do that, what you described, to do that successfully, it's really thinking about those three things together: the cultural environment, the technology environment, and the physical space, designed together.

Sarah:

And you think about that not only in the workspace, but then also at home. Because you stated earlier too, there's this hybrid workspace now where you are working, sometimes you're only working three or four times a week in the office now, and then the other times you're at home.

Ron Martere:

Yes. So, for us, some of our latest research, we've gleaned some design objectives out of that research, that talk about equity, engagement, and ease. I'm not talking about, let's say working from home right now, per se, like looking at that physical space, we think there's an opportunity there to actually make that space better. Let's put that aside for a second. When I think about equity, it's like, as you think about your team working together, and some of those people working remote, some of those people working in the office, how do you make that more an equitable, inclusive experience for all participants? So you're not the person on the other side that is not really getting what the meeting is intended to, or your voice isn't being heard, or there are sidebar conversations happening that you really can't hear or see. Or, maybe someone's writing something on a whiteboard and it's not digital, and you don't have access to that, and you can't share in the same way as someone who is in the office.

And so, we're thinking about ways to eliminate that gap between co-located and remote employees. That's a big, hairy challenge, but there's a lot of work happening within Steelcase to bring that together.

Currie:

In Steelcase, you do all this research and you communicate with clients, or perspective clients, employees. So is Steelcase a research company, or a furniture company, or a cultural company, or a consulting company?

Ron Martere:

We've been described a lot of different ways. We are a large manufacturer, there's no doubt about that. But, I like to say we're a research company that happens to make furniture, architectural elements, and even some technology products. So that architecture, furniture, and technology piece that I said earlier, that is something very important to us. It's not just about the furniture itself, it's maybe tying all that together, including the architecture. So, make no mistake, we are a large manufacturer, but we're inspired by helping people do their best work, and by creating great places wherever work happens. And that could be in the office, or that could be at home.

Currie:

Clearly, your research has steered Steelcase in the right direction. How have you been able to navigate the unforeseeable parts of COVID and the current economic environment, such as the supply chain issues that we're experiencing?

Ron Martere:

The supply chain issue is a major factor for Steelcase. We are a made-to-order business, so we don't stock a bunch of things and when someone orders it, we just sort of send it out from our warehouse. We really build it at a moment in time where we're working with an architect partner or a design firm partner, and they're helping design the space, based on the dimensions in the building, based on the design intent of the building, whether it's in fabrics or finishes and so forth, dimensions. And so, because of that, the complexity of supply chain, it hits us in a much more dramatic way. We're working with a lot of vendors in a just-in-time manner, so when things slow down, it slows down our whole business. And so, without question, this current situation has a huge impact on our company. We do regionalize our manufacturing, so I'm proud to say that our biggest plant in the world is in Athens, Alabama. So, awesome War Eagle for the State of Alabama.

Sarah:

We love it.

Ron Martere:

Absolutely. Absolutely. So, that helps, so regionalizing the manufacturing. But really what we're doing now is just trying to be agile to think through, "Okay, because of this is happening to us and they're macro forces out of our control, what might we do to overcome it?" So things like dual sourcing. In other words, maybe sourcing things from multiple suppliers versus just one supplier to mitigate impact of if one of those suppliers is significantly impacted worse than the other. We are building inventory on certain parts and sub-assemblies. That's not something we typically did in the past, but we need to do that, so that we can react quicker for our clients and meet project schedules. Air freighting and things like that, which we don't like to talk about so much, because it's expensive to do air freight. But in the short-term, we're having to do things like that because of our just-in-time nature and because we are supporting clients who have projects that need to be delivered at a certain moment.

Sarah:

It seems like it's a scary time for some leaders and managers, but it seems like you all really try to make an effort, both in the office and at home, to create this really good, high-level environment of thinking, and working, and enjoying it. What would you say is probably some of scariest experiences, both you as a leader, you as somebody who's a leader and a manager, somebody that has to constantly evolve and come up with ideas for progressing not only your materials and your furniture, your office space, but also the company?

Ron Martere:

We have our own challenges, just as I mentioned earlier around supply chain, and we believe our research is really sound. I just saw that we'd released our most updated global report. It's available online, but we've talked to 57,000 people in 11 countries over the last two years, really trying to understand what is happening with their expectations around work, what they need, what they're concerned about. And so, we've gleaned some insights from that, that we think are really sound because of the breadth of what we're engaging in. We're not just talking to employees, but we're actually, we alternate our research on a quarterly basis between leaders and employees. Because as you say, what leaders may be concerned about may not always align with what people are concern are fully concerned about. And so we try to figure out some commonalities, but also what the tensions are with those groups.

So I think our research is really, really sound right now. I think what makes us optimistic, but also a little nervous maybe, is how do we execute that, or how do we help companies understand what levers to pull so they have the confidence of the decisions they make about their space and their work experience design is the right one. So we've got some great information to share and some findings and some design principles around the work experience that we believe are sound.

Currie:

One of the more interesting things we think that has come out of the work-from-home experience, is the lack of socializing. And you don't always think of that necessarily when you think of going to work. Do you think that create a great space for employees to socialize and collaborate in a less formal setting is something we'll see more companies adopt? And, how would they go about that with the new normal being a hybrid work experience?

Ron Martere:

Yeah, that's a great question. One thing that's clear is that the workplace needs to draw inspiration from a new source. It's not just about, "I have 100 people, I need 100 desks, 100 chairs, 100 of whatever." It really needs to think about, "Hey, how do I make this a place where people A, want to be?" because they have choices. There's a lot of survey data out there that says that. People may not to come work for an organization that requires them or mandates them to be in an office five days a week. So, how do you create a place that people want to be? And I don't think, I honestly don't think it will be five days a week in most cases. I think it'll be more like three to four days a week, that's what our surveys, our day goes. And the better you can make that experience for people, the more likely are that they actually will come to the office. And, more importantly, like where they work and like their coworkers.

Some of our design principles right now and what we're finding is, people really want a sense of belonging. It's great to be able to work from home, but if you think about working from home, take it to the extreme. What if you worked from home forever? You never have, you joined a company when you were 23 years old coming out of Auburn, and you got to work from home and you never had to go to the office. You never got to meet your coworkers, you never got to meet your boss, everything was on video. I just don't know if that over the time, that you're going to have a real sense of belonging to that culture.

We believe that an overall work experience design that does foster a sense of community, that builds trust, that brings people together, unites those people in purpose, there's a way to do that with your work experience design that allows for people to work from home when they need to, but an amazing place for them to meet, to congregate, to build that sense of community, to collaborate, to do their best work. And ultimately, that's what we believe. We believe the office aspiration should be this place where you do your absolute best work.

So the inspiration around that can't just be, "Oh, 100 of whatever. Let's build it out in this fully homogenous kind of way," we believe it needs to be more like a neighborhood, a community, where it's vibrant, where there's different experiences, where there's something maybe new around every corner. That's going to be more of an experience that people will gravitate towards versus, "I have to go to the office," and that day's not going to be very good.

Currie:

So Mr. Martere, what would be the best advice you would give to students either finishing school, or having just finished school?

Ron Martere:

Well, I would say, if I think about people we've hired one to two years into their career, we typically don't hire a lot of brand new college graduates right out. We do have a program called PACE, which I encourage you to investigate if you're foreign students, called our PACE program, which is a entry-level program for college graduates that Steelcase has and has had for many years. But the skills that are most covetable for us are, we want people who are curious, we want people who are agile. What I mean by that is they could work with other people, they can respond quickly as situations change.

We want people who are continuous learners, people who can work, I would say, definitely digital skills. If you haven't, I'm sure they have them by now, but if you don't, I'm sure you've got a lot high-degree of digital literacy as you enter the workforce, because there is just a huge demand for that and, you know, digital transformation's happening, but it's really around that. There's a whole host of what they call 21st Century skills, I'm a big believer in those. But the ability to collaborate, work with others, be a global thinker, be curious about business, lean in, take some chances. Whether you're first year in the job or 20 years in the job, those are skills that are covetable to me personally, and I know to other business leaders.

Sarah:

So what's next for you?

Ron Martere:

What's next for me? I've been with Steelcase since 1999, which is unbelievable to me, but it's been a fantastic ride, and it's been an amazing organization. And what I would say is, the company's always... And I've moved from California to Texas to New York, and I've worked internationally for the company as well. Not based there, but I've done projects internationally. And I would say, the company has always so like, even though it's a $3 billion company, roughly, it feels like a small company because it allows you to be very entrepreneurial in your job. And, there's always learning opportunities.

So for me, as long as I'm learning, as long as I'm challenged, as long as I'm able to be an entrepreneur within a large company, I'm happy. So for me, I don't know, maybe there's an opportunity to lead a larger organization within Steelcase. Although, I'm pretty all right now with my size, Unless it sounds, this sounds a little bit, what do you call it? A little bit arrogant. I'm not trying to be arrogant. But I don't want to make sure us doesn't listen to this either. They might want to move me to Michigan, so I got to be careful.

Although Michigan's a great state, and Western Michigan where Steelcase, is beautiful. So if you've ever been to Lake Michigan and Grand Rapids, it's really, really pretty there.

Currie:

Ron, you have been exceptional. You're like an encyclopedia of knowledge, and so fun to talk to and listen to. How do our listeners follow your story, or stay in touch with you?

Ron Martere:

I think the best way to do it, just follow me on LinkedIn. I try to share relevant things about our company's work, things of interest to me. In all candor, we're kind of geeks about the workplace, so a lot of what I share is around workplace transformation, hybrid work, trends in work, real estate. So if you're interested in those kind of things, just find me on LinkedIn.

Currie:

Awesome.

Sarah:

Ron, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time. War Eagle.

Ron Martere:

War Eagle, guys. Thank you so much for reaching out, I appreciate the interest.

Narrator:

Harbert. Inspiring business.