Wisconsin MBA

On Friday, November 11th, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year, the Nicholas Center CFIB Class of 2013 was fortunate enough to have a great presence from Johnson Controls - Nicholas Center Board Member Susan Kreh, Vice President Finance in Power Solutions, with her three team members, and Mike Leske, Executive Director of Leadership Development.

Mike Leske led off the round of presentations. Mike has been in the Human Resource department of the company for an impressive 21 years, and has had a close relationship with the Nicholas Center for five years. Mike gave us a brief introduction of Johnson Controls' history, business development, and the company's engagement in global communities. He also shared excellent financial performance of the company for fiscal 2011 with the revenue increase by 19% to $40.7B and the profit increase by 9% to $1.6B. Before fiscal 2008, Johnson Controls achieved 67 consecutive years of increased revenue and 37 years of increased earnings in its 125 years' history. This performance excites everyone who wants to work for a growing company with a great collaborative culture.

Following Mike, Susan and her team shared their exciting projects for commercializing innovation and developing new business models for the existing products. Power Solutions business has expanded remarkably as the world's largest supplier of lead-acid batteries. It gained 26% return on investment, the highest return among three businesses in fiscal 2011. With the challenge of not being able to acquire companies because of anti-trust barriers, Power Solutions devotes its energy toward two core values, innovation and sustainability, to be a continually profitable growth engine for the company.

Nolan Ott first shared with us his experience with the leadership development program (JCLE). He worked on a nine person team from different units and functions with the task of better commercializing innovation. Based on the growth roadmap of building on core business with emerging markets in the middle and technology on the top, his team recommended a strategy for the company to maintain its comparative advantage by keeping technology updated.

It is also impressive that finance people are so comfortable talking about technology. Yulia Jigalina and Kari Gilbertson shared their experience for product innovation with the focus on start-stop technology. The innovation program consists of three phases - opportunity phase for diversities in thought from different functions, pursuit phase for evaluating new business ideas, and realization phase for how to make and market products. They engaged in identifying target product markets, determining delivery channels, and deciding on how to produce the product through benchmarking internally and externally. It was an amazing experience to learn how the company develops different business models to address regional differences and how Johnson Controls intends to pursue growth opportunities geographically.

As a student interested in corporate finance, the opportunity offered by Johnson Controls excites me because of the potential to develop future leaders. Moreover, it impressed me that the finance unit is so deeply involved in business growth, and contributes to the company's long-term sustainability. Another take-away from their group project is that cross-functional execution helps build relationships throughout the group and is an opportunity to learn how to communicate effectively and to work together as a team.