Graduate Stories – 2002

Tom O’Brien

Establishing a values-based corporate culture

Tom joined Tom’s of Maine in 1997 as COO after thirteen years at Procter & Gamble. He grew up in an entrepreneurial environment. He graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and received his MBA from Harvard Business School. His responsibilities include overseeing daily operations of the business including sales, marketing, finance, and manufacturing, as well as working in partnership with the President on Strategic Planning. Tom is also a member of the Tom’s of Maine Board of Directors.

The process of The Seven Intentions®, if you are serious about it, gives you an incredibly empowering toolbox. You first notice it in the personal choices you make. It helps you become a more centered individual, whether it’s in a relationship at home or in the work environment. All roads lead to Rome. In other words, it’s difficult to lead two separate lives, a work life and a personal life. It gives you tools to help power yourself forward.

In business, so much energy is taken up by people trying to guess or figure out the work environment. The Seven Intentions® program allows individuals, and ultimately a company, to be up-front in connecting with the good in that environment. It allows you to truly know yourself as an individual and to know the organization. Companies can’t move forward unless they take inventory of who they are and what they believe in. It’s very difficult to do the collective inventory if people aren’t being honest with themselves.

What we at Tom’s of Maine are learning is that people who have gone through the Saltwater course know what they value and what the company values. They have made the journey to discover what is important to them and, while they are working here, they are actually acting on and reinforcing what they believe in. You get people who are very loyal. Reducing turnover is a big part of this. It’s a process of self discovery and self motivation.

We’ve begun to very proactively apply The Seven Intentions® here at Tom’s of Maine. In most companies, the typical meeting starts with a review of the agenda, and the highest-ranking voice in the room often dictates what the game plan is. Sometimes that game plan is not the best plan that could be pursued. What we do is begin each meeting with a Connecting with Goodness exercise. We basically try to get out of our work roles and bring humanness into the circle. Most of the tables in our meeting rooms are round, there’s no head-of-the-table. It helps us level the playing field and reminds us that we are all on a journey together.

I’ve found that The Seven Intentions® can help me be very intentional about setting up a business environment that everybody understands. Companies that have been able to move from doing things as an afterthought to operating with intention tend to be consistently high performing companies. They turn out a lot of high performing people who are happy, healthy, motivated, and strong contributors.