🖼️ The Power of The Herman Miller Picnic Poster
Transform ordinary career moments into extraordinary with this mindset
Imagine it’s your first day of work. You’re assigned an ordinary project — design a picnic poster for the company’s summer employee outing. Instead of brushing it off as basic, you invest creativity into the project. You treat the poster like a work of art. Fast-forward, years later, your picnic posters are displayed at the Museum of Modern Art and prestigious art galleries around the world. Now, that’s the epitome of taking an ordinary assignment and transforming it into an extraordinary experience.
This is the true story of Herman Miller’s Steve Frykholm, who is now Vice President of Creative Design and has a 45-year tenure at the company. Learn more in this video:
I learned about the Picnic Poster from Ryan Anderson, Vice President of Global Research and Insights at MillerKnoll. I spoke with Ryan this summer. Here’s our conversation:
Since discovering this story, I haven’t stopped thinking about what a powerful lesson the Picnic Poster is for careers to embrace an ordinary task and transform it into an extraordinary one.
Did I have a moment like this in my career? Well, not quite MoMA-worthy, but experience-wise — definitely. 🧺 My Picnic Poster Moment
In my first week in a new role, I was asked to take over All Hands for a start-up. Two weeks later, I saw the potential when I did as much as I possibly could to reimagine it in one week. This project gave me an incredible opportunity to build relationships with leaders, better understand the business and position culture front and center in our remote work experience.
I still remember while building the slide deck, I went looking to highlight upcoming internal programs. But, I discovered there were few events to share so I decided to create them. I empowered employee resource group leaders to organize, launched a learning seminar series where employees taught a skill and started a fireside chat series with Executives. Ultimately, this project transformed my career passions while making an impact on the organization. Here’s more about how you can host epic All Hands with a focus on the virtual experience:
Next, I asked leaders featured on The Switchboard for their Picnic Poster Moment. Here’s what several of them had to say:📦 Tiffin Jernstedt: Boxes Become an Archive
When tasked with processing 500 boxes for the PVH Archives, I transformed it into a comprehensive 360 archive with over 1 million assets. This archive became a valuable resource for associates and partners, and we even hosted engagement programs around it.
By leveraging my network to learn about best-in-class archives, I was able to create a resource that served culture, community, education, partnerships, and conserved company history.
🍜 Kevin Lee: The Honest Video
For the first 9 months of immi, we had a subpar version of our product. We weren't super happy with it. Since we launched during Covid, our original manufacturer couldn’t support the product. The business basically almost failed in that first year. I decided we should write and create an ad video that told the story about what happened. We did it all ourselves, from storyboarding to filming to the stock images.
We shared our family backgrounds and decided to be honest about how much everyone hated our first version. Then, we shared how we took that feedback and spent another year revamping the product from the ground up. The video went viral — it basically saved our business today and is still the strongest ad because it’s a genuine story. We heard from customers and other CEOs who shared they had been in our shoes and encouraged us to keep going. It taught us to remember to always be honest even if we're failing.
📰 Holly Nicola: The Unplanned Newsletter
When I was an administrative assistant, I was asked to ensure that frontline employees understood the latest company announcements. I first wanted to understand why people weren't reading them in the first place. Understanding that these employees only had limited time to read their company emails, I tried different ways to get the announcements to them - printed posters when they walked into the office, created a manager briefing card for managers to use to cascade the info to their teams, or even fun notes in their personal locker.
Over time, I created a weekly newsletter recapping everything people missed or should know about, fun and informative videos, and the first functional website that featured company announcements along with unique stories from the employees and other resources they needed at their fingertips. This was the key to unlocking my role as a communications leader.
📧 Caleb Bushner: Write Your Marketing Emails
I’ve found that staying very close to the “beating heart” of a brand is a vital tool in building a marketing engine, and really helps me as a marketing leader. Every post or email is a mini insights opportunity. It’s message testing or a free survey. An A/B test with nearly immediate feedback.
One of the most important goals of leading a marketing org is maximizing the degree to which you resonate with your target audiences. However senior I get in a company I have found that it’s actually really valuable to stay close to the day-to-day audience touch points so you understand where your market is, where they’re going, and can validate whatever assumptions or experiments you might have about how to position your company around it.
Do you have a Picnic Poster Moment? Share in the comments below.Steve Frykholm and The Herman Miller Summer Picnic Poster Collection:
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Nice piece, Julia! Jolene wrote a wonderful series about the Picnic Posters: https://timetravelkitchen.substack.com/p/the-herman-miller-summer-picnic-posters
Love the Picnic Posters, Julia!