Ep. 246 — Vicki TenHaken: What Century-Old Companies Do That the Business Books Miss

5 min read

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Episode Summary

Most of what you’ve read about building a company that lasts was written about Apple, GE, and the publicly traded unicorns. The actual companies that have made it a hundred years in America are mostly privately held, small to medium-sized, and almost nobody studies them. Vicki spent ten years fixing that. She built a database of US Century Club companies the hard way (state by state, industry association by industry association), ran the same survey on long-lived companies in Japan with her colleague Makoto Kanda, and compared the practices against younger companies to see what’s actually unique. What came back is five factors, and the finance professors in the back of the room hated it. A mission stated in something other than money. A culture that takes its time on change. Real partnerships with customers and suppliers. Long-term employees treated as whole people. And a quiet financial conservatism that makes the spreadsheet guys uncomfortable. We got into why profit is the fuel and not the destination, the Lehman Brothers consultant who told one CEO he didn’t have enough leverage (and what happened to Lehman), and the one thing that has to be unanimous before any of this works: the decision to stay independent.

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## Top 10 Takeaways
  1. If your mission is written in financial terms, you won’t make a century. Profit is fuel, not destination.
  2. How you get things done matters as much as what you do. Your culture carries the next hundred years.
  3. Your core competencies decay if you don’t actively reinvest. Companies that last don’t rest on what made them old.
  4. Big change takes longer than you think. Bring your team, customers, and suppliers with you or it won’t stick.
  5. Your customers and suppliers are partners over decades, not transactions this quarter. Covenants beat contracts.
  6. Long-term employees compound. Cut turnover in half and recruiting cost becomes reinvestment in something else.
  7. Your community is part of your company. The little league sponsorship and your hiring pipeline are the same thing.
  8. Slow to take on debt, quick to own your facilities. Conservative balance sheets outlast clever ones.
  9. The leaders who last stay curious. Weird questions and outside ideas beat protecting what you already know.
  10. Staying independent has to be unanimous among the owners. Without that agreement, every other practice collapses.

Sound Bites

“We see profits as the fuel for our organizational engine, not our destination.” (@TBD) — Vicki TenHaken

“I prefer covenants over contracts. I just really want to see that mutual relationship, whether it’s with a customer or a supplier, that we have this commitment to each other.” (@TBD) — Vicki TenHaken

“We had somebody from Lehman Brothers come consult with us and told us we didn’t have nearly enough leverage, that we really needed to borrow some more money if we wanted to be successful. We didn’t hire him. Look what happened to them, and we’re still here.” (@TBD) — Vicki TenHaken

“If you’re the greediest human being on the planet, you would do this, which means that humans and all the stakeholders come first because it generates the profits.” (@TBD) — Ryan Tansom

About This Episode

Vicki TenHaken is a professor of management at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. Before academia she spent over twenty years at Herman Miller in roles including EVP of Strategy, VP of Marketing, and Chief of Staff, after starting her career at GE. She’s a Fulbright scholar who taught change management in post-communist Poland, and spent ten years researching long-lived companies in Japan with economist Makoto Kanda before building a US database large enough to compare against. The result is her book, Lessons from the Century Club Companies: Managing for Long-Term Success. This conversation lands in the iBD canon as the data-backed case for why mission, culture, partnerships, long-term employees, and community produce companies that compound for a hundred years.

Resources Mentioned

  • Lessons from the Century Club Companies by Vicki TenHaken — Available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
  • How 100-Year-Old Companies Survive — Vicki’s blog.
  • Vicki’s email — centuryclubcompanies@gmail.com or tenhaken@hope.edu
  • Herman Miller — Where Vicki spent 20+ years; DJ Dupree’s plaque quote on humanity as a judgment of business.
  • Leadership Is an Art by Max De Pree — The Herman Miller CEO’s book of stories, including the “two kids in every outfield position” parable.
  • Good to Great by Jim Collins — Referenced as previous research on long-lived companies.
  • The Living Company by Arie de Geus — Former head of strategy at Royal Dutch Shell; on businesses as communities of humans.
  • Makers and Takers — Book on the financialization of American business.
  • The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek — Referenced for the long-term view critique of short-term capital.
  • Small Giants by Bo Burlingham — Companies that choose to be great instead of big.
  • Roger Martin — On the difficulty of balancing tradition and change.
  • Conscious Capitalism — The six-stakeholder framework Ryan referenced.
  • Arcona Intentional Growth Course — arcona.io

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