Our team in Creative Services just came across some VHS tapes and found this business-to-business marketing video from the 80’s. We’re proud to say the Mira-Coil is still in production after all these years!
Leggett & Platt employees are committed to protecting and preserving the environment. We’re quite proud of the effort these teams have made through their commitment to the Eco Initiative, a program that provides guidelines for a proactive environmental management system.
We’ve highlighted five stories from the fall edition of “Eco News,” our quarterly internal newsletter, to share with you:
As my interview with Suzanne Hall wrapped up, I asked her one final question: “What is the one thing you’d like our readers to know about you?”
“I want them to understand how passionate I am about my job. And that I truly care.”
For the past 20 years, Suzanne has proven how passionate she is, pouring her heart and soul into her role as Staff Vice President of Finance and Payments. I recently sat down with Suzanne to hear her story of working at Leggett & Platt: Continue reading
There are 130-plus employees in Leggett & Platt’s IT department and well over half of them manage either people or projects. As an entry-level IT employee, I get to work with all the management-style combinations you could imagine on a daily basis. It used to make my head spin, so I categorized managers (with the help of trainingmag.com terminology) into 3 main management styles. Then I analyzed the characteristics and came up with ways I could dazzle ‘em all.
The Directing Management StyleManagers who use this style tell employees what to do, how to do it, and when it needs to be done. They like to poke holes in your arguments, they like to be in full control, and—if we’re all being honest— they can be a little intimidating. They know what they want and they expect no less than their vision (which is often brilliant). Continue reading
Leggett & Platt has been in business for over a century, but our logo has undergone relatively few changes in that time. The one major change came in the early 1970s, when we moved from a simple “L” to a script typeface. I sat down with Leggett’s Creative Director, Scott Clark, to discuss the history of the logo.
In the early days, this metal tag was attached to every Leggett product and eventually became the official logo. The circle in the design was actually a hole used for fastening the tag to springs and frames. “I love the simplicity of this design,” stated Clark. “It’s fascinating how well it holds up–what looked good 100 years ago still looks good today, and that’s not always the case.”
Families display certain common traits and behaviors, generation after generation, that have nothing to do with genetics. These non-genetic markers are passed down through shared perceptions, beliefs, and actions, as surely as hazel eyes and curly hair. The same is true for companies.
At Leggett & Platt, we recently set out to revise the competencies in our annual performance review, and accidentally found ourselves deconstructing our corporate DNA. We started the project with 15 competencies – things like strategic thinking, decision making, interpersonal skills, and communication. Instead of simply trying to whack a few that seemed less important, we started with a clean sheet of paper and our company history book. Looking back over 130 years, our leaders displayed certain common qualities, no matter what the business challenge of the era. When we distilled this “Leggett DNA,” we found eight key qualities that drive our collective success. Eureka! These characteristics, expressed as actions, reflect our culture and the way we lead.
A member of the Leggett team: Continue reading
Board Chairman & CEO David S. Haffner
For four full decades—from the 1960’s through the 1990’s—Leggett & Platt achieved growth of 15% per year (on average) in earnings, dividends, and stock price, largely by pursuing a strategy that focused intently on revenue growth. Over those 40 years revenue ballooned from $7 million to $4.3 billion, earnings grew about 1000‐fold,and our stock split approximately every 5 years. But as we entered the new millennium, our strategy seemed to lose its effectiveness. For the five years ending December 2007, Leggett & Platt’s stock priced moved sideways while the S&P 500 index achieved an 80% return. The desire for topline growth had led us to make certain acquisitions for which it’s now clear we paid too much, given their failure to meet expected performance levels.
We needed to make a change in strategy.
