Her city-league softball team was good; Brenda Baumann was not. She spent a lot of time on the bench. Then one day, the coach asked her to stand in for him for an upcoming tournament.
“I said, ‘You’re kidding, right?’ And he said, ‘Brenda, there isn’t anybody better than you to motivate and encourage others to do their best.’ That was an ‘Aha!’ moment for me,” Baumann recalls. Today, many years after her coaching debut, the 42-year-old Baumann is director of marketing at Marvin Windows and Doors in Warroad, Minnesota, still motivating her team to be the best in the field.
“Brenda is just great,” says Judy Landin, director of pre- and post-sales services at Marvin. “She’s a really good listener, she’s very dedicated, and she has a lot of determination, so even if we stumble along the way, she handles it well and gets us back on track.”
Susan Marvin, president of the privately held company, says that people like working with Baumann “because she doesn’t let her ego get in the way. Brenda doesn’t play politics. She’s not motivated by title or recognition. She’s motivated to get the job done—and get it done well.”
Baumann started out in the training and tours department at Marvin in 1992, but a summer market-research project led her to new-product development—and a chance to manage one of Marvin’s highest-profile projects: the redesign of its entire line of wood and wood-clad patio doors. Baumann and her team developed a strategic plan that increased efficiency (a 30 percent reduction in parts), improved product-performance ratings, and saved Marvin hundreds of thousands of dollars. It also strengthened the company’s customer focus.
“It was a way of looking up and out,” Baumann says of the process, “of always thinking about how to do things more effectively and still delight our customers—whether it be in product development, process improvement, or anything else.”
In 1995, Baumann became Marvin’s first internal communications and planning manager—and devised its first comprehensive crisis-management plan. She led communications with customers, employees, distributors, and retailers as Marvin endured a long legal battle with a supplier whose preservative product had failed, resulting in rot and decay in Marvin products. Marvin stood behind its own products—at great expense to itself—and earned widespread praise for doing so.
The experience “was baptism by fire,” Baumann says. “It was intense, yes. But it was the best training ground that I could have ever had in crisis communication and working with all the different stakeholders.”
“The taller the mountain, the tougher the challenge, the better Brenda performs,” Susan Marvin says. “There’s incredible clarity in her problem-solving ability, even at the most intense moments.”
Baumann was tested again in June 2002, when floodwaters rose in Warroad. Her leadership skills made her Marvin’s natural choice to devise a relief and recovery program that would benefit all who were in need, not just Marvin employees. Baumann drove the creation of the Warroad Area Community Fund, which raised more than $58,000 in employee- and company-matched funds for flood victims.
Having recently completed her MBA at the University of St. Thomas, Baumann now supervises a staff of eight. She’s still an active board member of the Warroad Area Community Fund, and is vice president of the Warroad Convention & Visitors Bureau.
Asked about her goals, she says, “It might sound a little funny, but I’d like to become a better leader. I’d like to identify and mentor high-potential people, help them see opportunities and succeed and feel good about their accomplishments. I’ve been so lucky here . . . and I want to give back in the same way.”
Susan Marvin says she can see Baumann doing whatever she chooses to do. “I just hope it’s with Marvin,” she adds with a laugh. “If my most treasured possession in the world was this company—and it might be—I’d feel very good with it being in her very capable hands.
