Reinventing Herman Miller’s Leadership Through a New Model for the Workplace

Created Living Office, the first complete rethinking of the workplace in decades, shifting Herman Miller from a furniture manufacturer to a leader in how people work.

Redesigned the business around the model, from product portfolio, to service, to go-to-market—positioning the company as a strategic partner at the beginning of projects, not a supplier at the end.

Reestablished brand and innovation leadership, defined new product categories delivering 20% of sales today, and launched 4 new service ventures. Grew the business 11% in the first full year.

1/15

Businesses were spending $1 trillion on workplaces, with less and less to show for it. Employees complained that going to the office actually hurt their productivity as daily occupancy fall below 50%. Herman Miller was increasingly seen as a transactional furniture supplier, and for the first time ever, competitors were viewed as the innovative workplace leaders. The declining perceptions were showing in Herman Miller sales.
2/15

Research led us to a foundational insight. Work had transformed, becoming creative, collaborative, digital, and humanistic, but no one had made sense of the transformation — or redesigned workplaces to support it. We realized Herman Miller could use its design capacity to do just that, and to be first-to-market with the knowledge, services, and furnishings for a new era of work. It was a once-in-a-generation opportunity.
3/15

We asked: if we forgot everthing we know about work and workplaces and started fresh, what would workplaces be like? The answer was Living Office — management, tools, and workplaces founded on a human connection, collaboration, and flow (not on rigid 1960s factories and 1980s technologies.) We reinvented Herman Miller’s business around it with a simple value aspiration: 30% more people, in 30% less space, who were 30% happier and more productive.
4/15

Living Office was a big opportunity. It monetized Herman Miller’s design capacity and workplace knowledge not just through furniture, but through digital platforms and services that helped organizations turn their workplaces into business assets. It promised to give Herman Miller new distinction in the $20B office furniture market and to gain a share of the growing $300B market for emerging workplace solutions.
5/15

Living Office built leadership in four areas: a human-centered point of view on work and workplaces that helped people and their organizations prosper; a placemaking framework to deliver those kinds of workplaces; a diverse portflio of furnishings and tools for provisioning them; and services and support that enabled their creation and livelihood. Each offered new brand and business opportunities.
6/15

In building a fresh POV on workplaces, we recognized there was no systematic understanding of what people did at work. Realizing we couldn’t make better workplaces without understanding work, we set off on six months of global research. It uncovered seven fundamental goals, ten work activities (shown here), and seven work characteristics that could define the why, what, and how of modern work across industries, regions, and cultures. It was a new foundation for new workplaces.
7/15

The new Placemaking Framework used our POV to rethink decades-old benchmarks of workplace design. Standardized offices, cubicles, and conference rooms gave way to diverse, ever-evolving work settings tied to the purpose, character, and activities of the people using them. It was a new landscape of work that used data to build human desire and performance.
8/15

We reinvented Herman Miller’s furnishings and tools around our new understanding of work and workplaces. We replaced generic cubicles and seating with purposeful variety, ultimately creating two new furniture categories: Focused Portfolios supporting specific high-value work and teams and Individual Elements elevating casual engagements and culture. Those categories represent over 20% of sales in the industry today.
9/15

We grew four new service businesses: Peformance Environments, consulting to support companies in transforming their workplaces; Robin Powered, the leading workplace utilization platform to help organizations make the most of their evolving spaces; Live Platform, the world’s first scalable platform empowering furnishings to support people’s needs across the workplace; and Living Office Settings, bringing together Microsoft, Crestron, and Logitech to sell ideal technologically integrated total settings for modern work.
10/15

We delivered the whole Living Office package to leading organizations and their designers. We demonstrated that workplaces could be beautifully desirable for people and a powerful business assets. And, we proved our value hypothesis: 30% more people in 30% less space, 30% happier and more productive. The impact became our influencer marketing that fueled the desire of organizations and the demand of their designers seeking a more valuable business model.
11/15

We reinvented the design and buying experience. Living Office became an authentic marketing platform that recaptured Herman Miller’s design and workplace leadership. We used Living Office content, tools, and frameworks to shift the company from an often price-driven conversation with furniture buyers at the end of a project to a strategic workplace solutions and value conversation with the C-Suite at the beginning of a project.
12/15

Living Office won Herman Miller its first award for workplace design (to add to its hundreds of product design awards) when Wallpaper chose the idea and its four elements as one of the world’s most important design innovations across two decades.
13/15

Living Office restablished Herman Miller brand leadership, articulated a new landscape of work for the world, reinvented workplace design to support it, create new service businesses to move Herman Miller into the $300B workplace services market, and used it all to grow its share in its core $20B furniture market. Living Office delivered a directly attributable 11% sales increase in its first full year.
13/15

Thank you to the leaders who sponsored the work:
Brian Walker, CEO; Curt Pullen, President North America; Ben Watson Executive Creative Director; Mary Stevens, Senior Vice President Global Marketing.

Thank you to the Living Office core team: Ryan Anderson, Tracy Brower, Alex Cammenga, Erinn Cerreta, Debbie Cook, Adam Daley-Fell, Richard Elder, Abdallah Fadel, Jeff Gibson, Lori Gee, Sam Grawe, Gretchen Gscheidle, Chris Hoyt, Shilpi Kumar, Katie Lane, Nic Milani, Ellie Rogers, Joseph White.
15/15

GREG PARSONS