Jeff Swartz

Jeff Swartz: When Was the Last Time You Changed Your Mind About Something Important?

Kevin Ohannessian — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:04:01 -0500

Is the Health of Your Employees Your Business?

Ellen McGirt — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:48:52 -0500

How to Make Socially Responsible Investments Pay Off

Jeff Swartz — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 08:14:22 -0400

Every 90 days, I report to Wall Street and our shareholders on the financial health of our company--called to the carpet when results are bad, receiving a pat on the back (if memory serves) when numbers are good.

Engaging Your Employees with Emotional Benefits

Jeff Swartz — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:43:59 -0400

In a values-driven company, it's relatively easy to engage employees: they sign up and show up for our annual global service days, use their Path of Service benefit (paid time off to volunteer) and are actively involved in community-based impact and awareness programs. We don't have to mandate civic engagement or force them to act on issues they care about--whether by nature or self-selection or, some might suggest, drinking too much of our Kool-Aid--employees here just "get it."

The Hard Work of Collaborative Solutions

Jeff Swartz — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 12:33:07 -0400

In business school, everyone wanted to be the CEO--you know, the infallible one in the suit, with years of experience and wisdom, the one with all the answers.

What a bogus model. Turns out, the best leaders are the ones with the questions, the ones capable of forging collaborative networks.

From Counting Carbs to Counting Carbon

Jeff Swartz — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:00:00 -0400

Imagine the food industry without nutrition labels: how could you shop without some sense of the nutrition or chemicals or ingredients in your macaroni and cheese?

Responsible Consumerism and The Challenge of Real World Brand Building

Jeff Swartz — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:00:00 -0400

In an economy as whacked out as this one is globally, the tired "customer is king" adage is actually a wicked understatement. Consumers have seemingly infinite choices from good brands--many of them desperate to move the merchandise to generate cash and survive. In an unforgiving marketplace like the one we are enduring, brands better build products and services around real, differentiated and defensible insights. "Here's what I hope you want to buy" is a merchandising strategy for failure.

Building the Right Model for Business in China

Jeff Swartz — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 11:00:00 -0400

Like it or not, for most major shoe manufacturers, China is the place to be. Pretty much whatever you need to make shoes--from factories with trained and available labor, to the largest concentration of leather tanneries on earth, to component suppliers of the mundane and the exotic--you can find in Guangzhou Province. As a "one-stop shop," China offers efficiency both in time and resources--scarce commodities from any CEO's point of view. And not just efficiency--our Chinese suppliers meet our quality standards consistently and deliver on time, as promised.

Timberland's Jeff Swartz on Corporate Responsibility

Mark Borden and Anya Kamenetz — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:30:45 -0400

Jeff Swartz likes to tell this story. It is a somewhat strange anecdote, with an unexpected moral -- but Swartz is nothing if not unexpected. He is sitting in his New Hampshire office, wearing jeans and a baseball cap, and talking about the summer he spent as an 11-year-old sweeping floors in his father's factory. "My dad said he'd forgotten something in the shipping room, so I took off at a run," recalls Swartz, who today heads the company, shoemaker Timberland.