A portion of Tom Chappell’s Public Address
to the Dartmouth College Community

The Importance of Values In Leadership
November 11, 2003

I am here to offer encouragement. You can pursue your private hopes for a worthy and successful life and help make this world better at the same time, if my life is any evidence of the possibilities for both personal gain and the enlargement of goodness to all. We need (1) to know who we are, (2) what we believe, and (3) have an intention to live our values. Intention to live your values is the secret to a worthy and successful life. Happiness is a state of mind and feeling that you are living the values you care about deeply and living them with some proficiency, while helping to make better the lives of others at the same time. The key is to know what makes you who you are, uniquely, and how you can be intentional in being yourself in all that you do. While goals and strategies are a necessary part of planning and living your dream, values are the substance of who you are and what needs to be acknowledged in the choices we make in realizing our destiny.

In 1970, my wife Kate and I started what later became known as Tom’s of Maine with an intention to provide product efficacy from natural ingredients, to operate with practices and policies, which honored and sustained the natural world, in a manner that respected our employees and communities with socially responsible policies; and we expected to make money and build wealth.

The first 15 years of the journey of developing innovative and natural products, building a brand respected by consumers shopping in both specialty health food stores and mass market traditional pharmacies and supermarkets, and learning how to grow a business profitably were wonderfully creative and rigorous. When we had earned the right from our pioneering savvy to become successful, a commitment which called for a change in strategy involving more analysis and more focus on the numbers, I became aware that my own personal response to growth by objectives and measurement was a disconnect. I began to drive the favorable achievements in the strategic plan at a high cost to myself; success was an empty experience. In becoming bigger and better, we had lost our identity as a pioneer in natural ingredient branding with environmental sensitivity and social responsibility. There were "no roses" so to speak to smell along the way.

I was confused, needed help, and found my way to graduate school to study religious philosophies of world traditions. At Harvard Divinity School, my weeks were split between running the business and pursuing a degree in Theological Studies.

Very quickly I became influenced by some philosophers, two in particular, who spoke to my needs. Martin Buber, an early 20^th century theologian, in his book, I and Thou, writes that we humans have two different worlds to choose from. One is the world of objects in which we are aware of a person or a part of nature as a means of achieving some higher aim. In this particular mindset we calculate how we can use these living entities as objects of achieving something else. Consider employees with role descriptions and accountabilities employed for the purpose of production, sales, income, and profit. In making objects of entity, we calculate a means for a greater end. Buber refers to these as I-IT relations.

The other world described by Buber is one in which we consider perhaps these same entities, people and nature, as having inherent worth and deserving of our awe and respect. As we consider them, we do not seek to use them for some higher purpose because they are already complete for us in themselves. Our response is love, honor, and respect. Buber calls this I-Thou relations. (See Buber’s Two Worlds popup.)

Clearly I was taken by Buber’s two worlds. I saw my early, creative years in the business as a mindset that operated with honor and service, but it turned into a full diet of calculation for gain. One world calculates, the other values. Buber goes on in his book to point out that the secret to living in community is to move in and out of these two worlds with ease almost to the point of integration. Being a pragmatist, I decided that integration of thinking about people and nature as both means to an end, like profit, and something as already worthy of my respect was possible for me if I were intentional about thinking that way. Left to my own devices, I was prone to live in the world of calculation in growing a profitable business. But with intention and help from both an inspirational source, which for me is God, and a culture in the company that supported leadership with both what is valued and what must be achieved, I found the insight to operate a business for both profit and the common good. Thus, Buber’s writings taught me the reality of two different world-views and values systems, in which integration, instead of either-or thinking, was possible. I speculated that "intentionality" was the operating mechanism to make integration possible.

A second philosopher helped me understand another important ethical principle, interrelation of all things. Jonathan Edwards, an eighteenth century New England philosopher and preacher, writes that the nature of being is relation. "Being alone is nothing," he states. When considering his philosophy, I tried to think of myself as distinct and separate from others. But my consciousness keeps me in a continuous state of relation to others. Thus my physical and emotional self, although distinct and separate, my mind and heart keep me in a constant state of relation.

I asked myself what were the implications in business. As I thought about it I realized that the business entity was also in a system of interrelationships with implied or stated responsibilities. I sketched out a diagram of all the entities, customers, employees, communities, nature, the government, owners, and suppliers as examples. (See Being is Relation popup.) Our relation is undeniable. Our responsibilities in those relationships challenge our American sense of private rights. My diagram exhibited my beliefs, that we are operating a business in a system of relationships and responsibilities. It was time to affirm and clarify just what we believed at Tom's of Maine, our next step creating a business that affirmed values and operated a goal oriented business strategy with those values.

One last piece of my puzzle was how to operate with these beliefs. After all, business schools have only recently begun to think about ethics in the curriculum. Plus the normative business culture is largely means to an end mindset. Values are seldom inherent in business cultures and strategies because they require intentionality, a new set of tools. I had to work out therefore how to make intentionality a tool kit for all occasions in business, not to mention, personal life.

I created The Seven Intentions® of Values-Centered Leadership to help leaders be more intentional and integrative of values and objectives. (See World Views popup.)

In closing, I need to acknowledge what is happening to me as I try to live out my values. I love solving problems, especially my own. Twenty years ago, I went searching for a solution to my professional life. In Martin Buber, I found the key to living my values as I strive to reach my destiny. In Jonathan Edwards I found how to be in responsible relation with others. And in my own mind, I found The Seven Intentions® as tools to integrate values and goals in an everyday practice. I live my values at home, at work, and at play, and I am happy.

The values journey is one taken with others, each having different gifts, each committed to the same destiny, each willing to help the other. And in the process, we receive more than we have given. Most importantly, we find ourselves.

Good luck!

Proprietary and Confidential – Joint property of The Saltwater Institute and Tom's of Maine. July 2003.