Donald+Knauss+104

=**The Life of a Clean Man: Donald Knauss, the CEO of The Clorox Company**=

**Part 2: Leadership and Culture Movie**
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**Introduction**
Donald Knauss became the CEO of The Clorox Company in 2006. As CEO, Knauss has shifted company focus to include environmental sustainability, convenience, and health and wellness. Knauss has also expanded trade with foreign markets, primarily in South American countries. Before joining The Clorox Company, Knauss spent 12 years with the Coca-Cola Company. There he started as a senior vice president of marketing for The Minute Maid Company and was president and chief operating officer of Coca-Cola North America before he left. Prior to the Coca-Cola Company, Knauss worked in the Tropicana and Frito-Lay marketing and sales division for PepsiCo, Inc. He started his career at in the paper products brand managing division of Proctor & Gamble. In 1977, he earned his BA in History from Indiana University before joining the MarineCorps. He serves on the Kellogg Company Board of Directors; Indiana University, Dean’s Advisory Board, College of Arts & Sciences; University of San Diego, Board of Trustees; Morehouse College, Board of Trustees; and Marine Corp University Foundation, Board of Trustees. President Obama announced his intent to appoint Knauss to be a member of the National Infrastructure Advisory Council on July 11, 2011.

The Clorox Company is based in Oakland, California and has 8,100 full time employees with operations in over two dozen countries and marketing in over a 100 countries. They have had revenues of $5.2 billion in the 2010 and 2011 fiscal years. The Clorox Company is a part of the Consumer Goods sector operating in the Cleaning, Lifestyle, Household, and International segments. In addition to selling their namesake bleach, The Clorox Company now sells everything from cat litter to charcoal, from lip balm to salad dressing, and from plastic wrap to drain cleaner. For a complete list brands and products, click [|here.] Almost 90 percent of their brands hold the No. 1 or No. 2 market share positions in their categories.

Though Knauss is not a household name, the Clorox brand is. Clorox brands ranging from cleaning products to condiments have probably played some role in our lives at some point in time. We chose Donald Knauss because of his ample leadership skills and experience, his involvement in education, and efforts to create inclusive equal opportunity work environments make him easy to research. Knauss has given interviews and lectures on leadership and his opinions of corporate responsibility, some of which are available online. He, and by extension The Clorox Company, have strong written commitments to values that benefit the community and environment.

**Personalit** y
Knauss' personality shines through his leadership style in the business world. His inclusiveness and ability to listen to the people around him has not only given him a competitive advantage in his market, but it has helped the company achieve an economic profit larger than most companies during this economic downturn.

In an interview with Anna Gilligan from [|Meet the Boss TV]; Knauss explains that when he expanded the Executive Board from six people to 12 people he got a lot of push-back from other people on the board. However, by including more people on the board, he obtained the ability to make the right, aligned, and quick decisions. Additionally, by giving everyone a seat at the table, he is able to get the opinions and inputs from every department. Knauss also puts an emphasis on the communication he has with every branch in the Clorox Company: "If I'm working down on the line in Fairfield, California, on our bleach line. And I don't understand to a point how my work connects to the overall strategy. I personally have failed...we have to just constantly communicate, and over communicate. And that's through a series of voice mails, emails, meetings, monthly lunches. You name it, we do it in terms of getting people engaged. And making sure the folks in Fairfield, in Houston, in Buenos Aires understand how they contribute to the overall strategy and the importance of what they do everyday."

Knauss' ability to communicate and include thoroughly displays his extroverted personality, but it also shows a slight need for affiliation that is somewhat uncommon among leaders. As the leader of the company, he needs to know people's thoughts, ideas, and opinions, but most of all, he needs to trust his employees and they need to trust him. This need for affiliation is overshadowed by a socialized need for power which is displayed by his wants and needs to make a difference in the company and through his scholarship funding.

Emotionally, Knauss appears stable and conscientious; however, that may only be a social perception through his interviews and speeches. Nevertheless, his calm, confident, hardworking attitude shows through because of his diverse experiences as a marine, a salesman at Pepsi, a marketer at Frito-Lay, a brand manager at Proctor & Gamble and the president of the Coca-Cola Company. Knauss is a man who understands business, but is also not afraid to admit of things he doesn't know. He has a high self-efficacy and self-esteem. As the former president of Coca-Cola [|Don Keough], told Knauss: "Don't act like a big shot." Knauss embraced this idea and does his best to keep an open door and treat everyone fairly.

The military also had a major impact on his leadership style; however, probably not in the way one may think. His style and personality are much less about command and control than they are about group cohesiveness. The Marine Corps motto is "[|Semper Fidelis]," meaning "always faithful" in Latin. Knauss' military background laid the foundation for sticking too and accomplishing the mission at hand. In a way, Knauss is a mix between thinking and feeling because of his inclusiveness. He wants to make logical decisions, but he also uses a lot of the opinions and inputs other people tell him.

Knauss wants his employees to model his behavior. If his employees really do model his behavior, there is no doubt as to why Clorox is doing so well in this economy.

**Values**
Knauss' values are reflected in Clorox's company [|statement]on Values and Ethics. According to the opening remarks on this page, Clorox's "strong corporate values not only guide us in achieving widespread success but also are the foundation of everything we do." The four values that the company centers around are stretching for results, doing the right thing, taking personal ownership, and working together to win. As in most companies, the mission and values that govern Clorox are representative of the values held by top management, and in this case, by CEO Donald Knauss.

Knauss' values appear to be twofold. The basic wording of Clorox's values seem to simply be instrumental, but if we focus on the subsequent descriptions and what is implied by the main values, we see that Knauss values achievement (through stretching for results), social respect (by doing the right thing), and self respect (through taking personal ownership), with further emphasis on all three of these terminal values shown by "working together to win."

Knauss works hard to connect personally with workers across the world and welcomes communication from employees at any level to ensure that anyone who has input is able to be heard. This represents Knauss' belief, as mentioned above, that by having more input from various employees, the company is able to make quick, aligned, and most importantly, the right decisions. Knauss is likely a strong believer in fairness in the organization, which is another reason why he may have elected to expand the board and why he is so adamant about being connected with employees at all levels of the company. He has proven to be successful at remaining impartial while recognizing different points of view. These are some of the reasons he was thrilled to have the opportunity to take the executive position at Clorox. He said in the [|press release] issued by Clorox upon his hiring, "It is also very important to me that Clorox has a corporate culture of driving results while respecting others. It's a culture steeped in core values with a deep commitment to community involvement." Knauss recognized that coupling his values and attitudes on fairness and community respect with Clorox's already established values would lead to advancement of these values and related goals.

With a desire to maintain fairness and honesty among supervisors and employees, Knauss likely values his employees' job satisfaction. This is one reason why the Values and Ethics statement is so easily accessible on Clorox's website. Knauss wants all of his employees to buy into these values, which will help the company run smoothly and effectively. Further, as Nelson and Quick point out in our textbook, employees who share their supervisor's values are more satisfied with their jobs and more committed to the organization.

We believe that Knauss holds a significant concern for others, and this leads to some of the values described above. The work values held at Clorox resonate from the top down, and include achievement, social and self respect, inclusiveness, fairness, and honesty. All of these values drive the company to remain as successful as they have, and are an integral part of how Clorox aims to further advance the company.

**Motivation Strategies**
Donald Knauss is a very motivational person. He was in the Marine Corps as an officer prior to becoming a CEO of any company. With the leadership skills he gained from his time in the marines, he has a powerful word. He has his own philosophy which states "to lead people in an organization, you need a strong focus on five values: Integrity, a sense of curiosity about the business, optimism -- a sense that we've going to prevail -- compassion, and humility." Earlier this year Knauss was honored to be elected the Keynote speaker of [|HDAW’11 Opening Session]. At this conference he said, "Our responsibility as leaders is to ensure we have not only the best people, but we are putting those people in positions that maximize and take advantage of their talent. Leaders at the end of the day make their people and assets more productive and valuable by driving effective strategy and by living your values everyday -- you can inspire. You can drive real progress.” The conference consisted of leaders from around the globe learning about different leadership strategies. He credits his marine corps days for the leader he is today. One valuable thing he said he learned is "Take care of your people first. Whatever mission you're trying to accomplish, whether in the military or in business, you can't succeed if people don't think you're looking out for their best interests". This quote shows how much he gives to his employees and how much he actually cares about them.

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**Meet the Clean Team**

 * ~  ||~ Jon Cleveland ||~ Nick Kubit ||~ Patrick Van Horn ||~ Maggie Wanner ||
 * Major(s) ||< Public Relations ||< Human Resources ||< Finance and Entrepreneurship ||< Finance ||
 * Hometown ||< Germantown, WI ||< Mequon, WI ||< Glenbeulah, WI ||< Schaumbug, IL ||
 * Most Used Clorox Brand ||< Glad ||< Pine-Sol/KC Masterpiece ||< Glad ||< Burt's Bees ||

**References** "Code of Conduct | Corporate Responsibility." //Clorox Corporate Responsibility (CR)//. Web. 06 Oct. 2011. . " Donald R. Knauss, Chairman and CEO of Clorox Discusses Leadership - YouTube." //YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.// Web. 06 Oct. 2011. .

"Executive Commitment - Don Knauss | Corporate Responsibility." //Clorox Corporate Responsibility (CR)//. Web. 06 Oct. 2011. .

"Leadership In Sales - Sales Manager Skills | MeetTheBoss." //Business TV - Executive Leadership - Executive Learning â MeetTheBoss//. Web. 06 Oct. 2011. .

"Don Knauss Named Chairman and CEO of The Clorox Company (NYSE:CLX)." //The Clorox Company - Investor Relations//. 30 Aug. 2006. Web. 06 Oct. 2011. .

San Francisco Business Times profile: __ [] __

Video of his Leadership presentation at Haas School of Business: __ [] __

Bio from alma mater: __ [] __

Wall Street Journal Bio: __ [] __

Press release from Clorox on his appointment: __ [] __

GreenBiz interview: []

PBS interview on Sierra Club’s endorsement of Clorox: []