“Why Executives Around the Country Turn to a Maine Lumberyard for Lessons in Leadership” – Inc. Magazine Feature

Hancock Lumber is a 175-year-old company with an outsize presence in its home state -but the impact of its current proprietor stretches far and wide.

Kevin Hancock's family name is nearly synonymous with the small lakeside town of Casco, Maine. It's where he grew up and where, now, he serves as chairman and managing owner of Hancock Lumber, the 175-year-old lumberyard his family founded there -on the edge of swooping Sebago Lake, home to rustic summer camps, quaint waterside cottages, and 7,500 acres of forested land -seven generations ago.

The Hancocks are lifelong Mainers, and every July, they help run the town fair, down to manning the midway games and the 5K road race. Their company, with 740 employees and 17 locations across Maine and New Hampshire, has kept food on the table and the mortgage paid for hundreds of Maine families for generations.

Historical Hancock Lumber photos.Courtesy company

Lately, the company has taken on another reputation: a working example of something Hancock calls shared leadership, a philosophy he's spent years carving out of his own lived experience. Basically, it means that leadership is about dispersing power and amplifying employees' voices at all levels of the organization. "I have seen first-hand what this approach to shared leadership, dispersed power, and a deep focus on the employee experience could do for a company and the people who work there," says Hancock. As a result, Hancock's built a consulting practice that runs parallel to the lumberyard, drawing organizations of all stripes to learn about shared leadership and how it manifests at Hancock Lumber.

John Fisher, North America CEO at South African peri peri chicken chain Nando's, recently looked to Hancock to help his team reach its own goals: "Our challenge is to communicate and execute the Nando's promise every day, 10,000 times, perfectly."

Nando's peri peri chicken team in Maine to meet with Kevin Hancock. Courtesy company

Perfection is a tall order with more than 50 store locations throughout the U.S. and Canada, but Fisher is so committed to that end that in May, he and his team traveled to Casco to experience the way things work at Hancock Lumber. "I saw Kevin's TED Talk on overcoming adversity and shared leadership," says Fisher, who came to know about Hancock through his work with a consulting firm called Door Two. "We had to go to Maine to see if this guy is the real deal. We needed to see it work at different levels of the organization to believe it."

Aerial of Hancock Lumber's Casco sawmill, home office, and retail/lumberyard. Courtesy company

Hancock has written two books: Not for Sale and The Seventh Power. Combined, they are an account of his life experience outside of running a lumberyard, specifically his developing a rare neurological voice disorder called spasmodic dysphonia, which makes speaking difficult. The diagnosis prompted him to travel to Native American reservations and Ukraine to explore and learn about himself and push his framework of leadership by understanding how, in their own ways, members of those communities had lost their voices, too - yet persevered in spite of hardship.

Hancock says those experiences have taught him countless lessons: how to motivate individuals, affect change, and foster relationships throughout an organization. They also brought up some important questions: "What if everyone on earth felt trusted, respected, valued, and heard? All eight billion people. What might change?"

Anna Baldwin, principal at Long Beach, California-based Door Two, asks clients like Nando's the same sorts of questions, too. She came to know Hancock four years ago, more than a decade after her sister Lisa bought Hancock's childhood home in Casco. Lisa thought the two aligned in their work and made a connection. Says Baldwin: "Immediately, we clicked."

Together, Baldwin and Hancock have a relationship that runs parallel to the lumber company. Through it, Door Two can share with clients the ways Hancock has shifted its operating rhythm to create a people-first, curiosity-led, solution-driven, flat organization. "They bring this deep expertise in executive coaching, applied psychology, and sociology to the world of work," says Hancock. "We have a program that is more powerful, rich, and comprehensive than one of us could have delivered on our own." Now, through this relationship with Door Two and his personal consulting practice, Hancock has worked with dozens of C-suite leaders and executives just like Fisher and his team.

Hancock, whose company reported $350 million in revenue last year, offers advice and clear examples of the philosophy he's developed in the past 20 years. For instance, when the company decided to renovate a building, nearly every employee inside the building had an opportunity to walk the site and offer suggestions on how to make the new space more efficient and useful. "We do this exercise called yes, and or yes, but," says Baldwin. "Employees have ideas, but there is nowhere for the idea to go or get to the right person to make a decision. A brand-new employee is so excited about an idea [only to be told] 'Yes, but you've only been here three months. Yes, but we tried that and it didn't work.' Hancock does a great job of yes and. It is very fluid."

Kevin Hancock. Courtesy company

Nando's has been a client of Baldwin's since 2010, and the trip to Maine was what Baldwin calls a capstone experience. It took place in May over the course of four days, and after much prep work - many months of reading, Zoom calls, and coaching sessions with Baldwin. The trip was meant to give 10 members of the Nando's executive team a chance to fully immerse themselves in shared leadership, seeing it first-hand and in motion on the granular level.

And for Fisher, that focus resonated during his team's nearly four-day site visit. Executives and team leaders from Nando's flew in from Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Toronto, and Columbus, Ohio, to participate. Through meetings with Hancock employees in all roles within the company, facility walk-throughs, and specifically tailored workshops with both Baldwin and Hancock, Fisher says he realized how simple the message is.

"One of my favorite insights from Hancock was the idea that if the world is going to change, then we are going to have to change it," says Fisher. "Most adults spend the majority of their waking hours at work. If we can help people be better co-workers, and energy givers, they will also learn to be better fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, friends, and neighbors. They will come home from work ready to give energy to the most important part of their lives: home."

Full article courtesy of Inc. Magazine and author Nicole Gull McElroy.

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