Max De Pree

Max De Pree (October 28, 1924 to August 8, 2017) was an American businessman and writer whose name is closely tied to Herman Miller, the office furniture company founded by his father, D. J. De Pree. He came of age in the shadow of World War II and later helped lead a company that became a setting for his ideas about work, responsibility, and humane management. Along with his brother Hugh De Pree, he assumed leadership of Herman Miller in the early 1960s, with Hugh becoming CEO and president in 1962.

De Pree had first planned to become a doctor. He studied at Wheaton College, but World War II interrupted his education. He served in the Army Medical Corps in the European Theatre of Operations, and while still in the Army he studied at the University of Pittsburgh, Haverford College, and the University of Paris. After his military service, he attended Hope College and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1948. That mix of service, study, and family business formed the background for the way he later wrote and spoke about leadership.

In 1980, De Pree succeeded his brother Hugh as CEO of Herman Miller and served in that role until 1987. He remained a member of the company’s Board of Directors until 1995. As a leader, he became known for promoting the idea of an inclusive corporation, one in which all voices are heard. He encouraged open communication and was often heard to say, “Err on the side of over-communication.” He also tried to connect a caring organization with business success, including his proposal of a “silver parachute,” in which terminated employees who had worked more than two years for a company would receive benefits based on years served.

De Pree carried those ideas into his writing. His best-known book, Leadership is an Art, was published in 1987 and has sold more than 800,000 copies. He followed it with Leadership Jazz in 1993, Dear Zoe in 1996, Called to Serve: Creating and Nurturing the Effective Volunteer Board in 2001, and Leading Without Power: Finding Hope in Serving Community in 2003. In 1992, he was inducted into Junior Achievement’s U.S. Business Hall of Fame.

He was also involved from the beginning with the Max De Pree Center for Leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary, established in 1996 as the De Pree Center. De Pree died at his home in Holland, Michigan, in 2017. His words still speak to readers because they present leadership as a daily practice of listening, serving, and changing. One of his quoted lines, “We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are,” fits the way he approached organizations: not as machines, but as communities capable of growth.