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Friends United Meeting |
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September 1999
Len Hadley, CEO of Maytag
Interviewed by Wilmer Tjossem
Leonard "Len" Hadley, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Fortune 500 Maytag Appliance Corporation, grew up a birthright member of the Bear Creek Friends Church near Earlham, Iowa.
When I wrote for an interview I was invited to his office the following
Tuesday morning. Upon arriving at 8:00 I was greeted by his secretary,
Marlene Shope Carpenter, and we joined Leonard for morning coffee. Marlene,
who has been with Maytag 38 years, said she grew up a Friend in LeGrand,
Iowa, and that my Aunt Joyce Tjossem had been among her grade-school teachers!
Newton, Iowa, is Maytag's International Corporate Headquarters and Leonard said that today the Corporation employs 22,000 people worldwide, has twelve manufacturing plants (two in China), assets of $2.5 billion, and annual sales of $4 billion. He has been chair and CEO since 1992, and he says he hasn't forgotten how his Quaker background helped prepare him for it.
Leonard recalled that the rural Bear Creek Friends neighborhood where he was reared was founded by the Curtis Barnett family that migrated from Indiana in 1854. Six years later the Hadleys arrived. They were farmers. Len is directly descended from Hadleys who originally came to Quaker Pennsylvania from England in 1734.
"My Quaker mother ingrained in me early the importance of Christian values and personal integrity," Len recalled. "One time, as a child, I pilfered a piece of cake and refused to admit it when caught. Mother quietly said, 'If you always tell the truth you'll never have to remember what you said yesterday.'
"Bear Creek pastors I remember included Ben Harris (my Dad's fishing partner), Lawrence Sams, and Ernie Biatto. The Meeting was special with its quiet unspoken love; its controlled feelings; and discipline to be cool in tense situations.
Berniece Cook Hadley, Leonard's mother, is remembered as an accomplished pianist always in demand in the Bear Creek community. For fifty years she was the church pianist as well. "While Mother played the piano, I usually sat on the front pew where childish squirming was discouraged. During 'quiet time' the tick-tock of the Regulator clock sounded like crashing cymbals. Even as a child I knew God was there." Leonard continues to support the church financially, and recently gave it new appliances, though he joined the Newton Methodist Church in 1960.
Leonard's parents, Willard and Berniece, were birthright Friends and lifelong members. Later in life they also joined The Masons, Eastern Star, and American Legion-organizations not generally encouraged by Friends, but, he said, "Bear Creek was always an open-minded Meeting."
"Our 1940s farm was a typical self-contained family unit: grain for livestock, large garden, orchard, and place for 'doing the chores,' doing man's work while still a teen, and staying with tasks until done. For most young people, leaving home is a major adjustment. I believe mine was eased by having acquired solid Quaker values that helped me distinguish right from wrong-and discipline to resist the wrong."
With siblings, Marjorie and Howard, Leonard attended a one-room country school built adjacent to the meeting house by pioneer Bear Creek Quaker families. Later the school was acquired by the township and became "Union Township School 4." The church sanctuary continued to provide the school an auditorium and a basement for winter recreation. The Bear Creek school closed in 1947 and students were bused to the Earlham public school. In high school Leonard played on the football and baseball teams and in 1951 the football team was undefeated. He organized the school's first student council and was valedictorian of his class of thirty. In high school he was absorbed in history, math, and chemistry with little awareness of business and commerce.
However, upon enrolling at Drake University in Des Moines, Len chose to focus on business administration which led to his discovering a special aptitude in business accounting. While still enthusiastic about history, he realized a teaching career wasn't for him.
During high school Len experienced a "funny and intangible" realization he had leadership characteristics. His peers usually deferred to him in athletics, even though he wasn't the best football or baseball player; and he was usually a team captain or elected class president with little conscious effort. It was here he discovered an immutable fact: A leader is one who has willing followers.
"Toward the end of the Korean conflict," he said, "I was drafted into the Army. I was impressed by the diligence of the military to accommodate religious conscientious objectors. Twice I was interviewed by commanding officers to be sure I understood available non-combatant options in the military.
"Bear Creek Friends always exhibited characteristic tolerance for different viewpoints. Other members were conscientious objectors. My father, Willard, was drafted into WW I Army service while a rural school teacher. He had attended Penn College in 1912-13. During the depression of the 1930s my father "sold out" from farming, and didn't return to it until the second World War. He was a prolific reader and would have been a better teacher than farmer."
When Leonard enrolled at the University of Iowa after military service he was elected Head Quadrangle Resident. In 1958, he earned a B.S.C. degree in accounting, and then studied law for a year. He was hired in 1959 by the "still small" Maytag Company as a product cost accountant, and after a series of special assignments, was promoted in 1975 to assistant comptroller. Len credits his rapid rise in Maytag to his mentor, John Cumming, then Maytag's chief financial officer. "When I started at Maytag I had no expectation of becoming the top executive with big pay; I sought only a middle-management career."
During fifteen intermediate years in corporate accounting and computer management, Leonard recalls, "I underwent a significant change of style in my career. I surrendered my position of 'management through knowledge' and adopted management through 'people.' In other words, in my early management roles I was required to know more than anyone in my department (power of knowledge). But as the company grew I could no longer 'know it all' and learned instead to 'manage through people.' This role-reversal brought an unexpected turn in my career.
"Now my job is guiding right people to their right jobs, and delegating all appropriate responsibilities. I've made mistakes, but so far few key people 'have voted against me with their feet.' I believe Quaker values of evenhandedness, compassion, and personal openness are today's imperatives for successful corporate leadership."
When I asked Leonard how he sleeps at night as the "buck-stops-here" manager of a huge global corporation of 22,000 employees, he replied simply: "Inner peace." Furthermore, he said, "Maytag has historic integrity that attracts and holds top people at all levels, so I have excellent support."
He owes inner peace as well, he says, to his Quaker up-bringing in Bear Creek. "My mother was a classic, stoic Quaker lady, who seldom raised her voice, yet left no doubt about her values and beliefs. She managed our family quietly, and always with understatement and controlled temperament. She embodied that inner peace I'm fortunate to inherit.
"Mother was committed to equality for all, and especially to the Quaker tenet that women be equal to men in all respects."
A few years ago Newton and Maytag confronted an ugly racial bias situation when the company employed a minority person, Lloyd Ward, to be president of the Appliance Division. A benighted Newton citizen embarrassed Ward by saying openly, "We don't need your kind here" Furthermore, while buying a family home in Newton, Ward discovered the deed was covenanted for "White Protestants Only." [Something no longer enforceable nor tolerated in Iowa!]
To the credit of Maytag Corporation and the City of Newton the racial slur and covenant were roundly denounced through a mayoral proclamation and a Maytag press release and large news-paper ad. When I asked Leonard about his role in the episode he confirmed personal leadership in condemning such bigotry.
Hadley said he has assured Ward that "he can expect fair treatment through sharing my personal commitment to the Quaker tenet: 'In God's eyes all are equal.'" It was announced at the May stockholders meeting that Lloyd Ward will be Leonard Hadley's successor as Maytag's chair and CEO.
Wilmer Tjossem lives in Newton, Iowa.
Copyright (c) 1999 Friends United Meeting
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