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Profile

Published July 2009

Applying Innovation to Learning

  

  Daniel Margolis

At appliance manufacturer Whirlpool Corp., Nancy Tennant created an environment for learning that unleashes employee innovation and helped transform the company.

Prioritizing learning was impressed upon Nancy Tennant from an early age. She said learning is a “family value,” and cited her grandmother as inspiration, who emphasized how important it was to keep learning throughout life.

“She was unusual in her era in the ’60s, going back to school as a 58-year-old woman when that wasn’t in vogue then,” Tennant said.

Tennant, now corporate vice president of leadership and strategic competencies for Whirlpool Corp., took from this a lesson on the indelible nature of an education. “I began to understand that degrees are one of the few things in life that people can’t take away from you,” she said. “They can take your house, they can take your car, but degrees are yours forever.”

Given this, it’s not surprising Tennant proceeded to earn multiple degrees, including an undergraduate degree in sociology and a master’s degree in industrial relations from West Virginia University, and her doctorate in organizational development from The George Washington University.

For the past seven years, Tennant also has been active in teaching at an academic level. “I’ve always been interested in education and teaching and helping other people get educated, and just to accept and understand change and use learning as a vehicle to do that,” she said.

She began at the University of Notre Dame, in the executive MBA program, where she taught strategy and innovation, and then moved to The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where she currently teaches embedded innovation. Tennant is using her own book, Unleashing Innovation: How Whirlpool Transformed an Industry, as the basis for the class.

The book draws from her experience at Whirlpool, where she’s been for the past quarter-century. Tennant started at Whirlpool in human resources, after five years moved into organizational development and then moved into a strategic role 12 years ago.

What originally drew Tennant to Whirlpool was a simple appreciation of appliances. “I was and am in love with the product,” she said. “I love to cook, so I respected and fell in love with the products that we made.”

Of course, Tennant also had professional reasons for coming on-board. “Twenty-five years ago Whirlpool was, and still is, a really exciting company,” she said. “When I came here back then, and even today, they’re very advanced in a lot of areas, especially in my practice.”

This affords a great deal in the way of new opportunities and challenges, something Tennant requires to thrive. This has sustained her attraction and loyalty to the company.

“Whirlpool’s a company where, if there’s a space or a gap, even if you’re not in that area, if you show some interest and ability to learn and you’re willing to do what it takes to perform, Whirlpool gives you a chance,” she said, adding that this has defined her career at the company. “I’ve been in unlikely spaces because I’ve raised my hand and asked for it and Whirlpool has followed through and said, ‘You know what? We’ll take a chance on you.’ Even today it happens. I get really unusual assignments or I see something, and I go to someone and say, ‘Well I’d really like to do X, Y, Z.’ And they say, ‘Let’s try it.’”