2022 Dayton Awardees: Mary and Kris Kowalski and Kyle Smith

Our board of directors has chosen Mary Anne Kowalski, owner of Kowalski’s Markets, Kris Kowalski Christiansen, CEO of Kowalski’s Markets and Kyle Smith, CEO of Reell Precision Manufacturing, as recipients of the 2022 Dayton Award.

The board, thus, recognizes the important contributions to society by small and family-owned businesses:

Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism Presents 2022 Dayton Awards to
Mary Anne Kowalski, Kris Kowalski Christiansen and Kyle Smith
The globally recognized Caux Round Table Principles for Business of 1994 reflect the special legacy of Minnesota business leadership in seeking success through service to community and stakeholders.  This remarkable legacy was epitomized by the Dayton Family – founders and owners of Dayton’s department store and Target Corporation, generous benefactors of the arts and community organizations.In 2019, the first Dayton Award was given to Douglas M. Baker, Jr. of Ecolab, in 2020 to Andrew Cecere of U.S. Bank and Don and Sondra Samuels for leadership in Minneapolis and in 2021 to police chiefs Medaria Arradondo of Minneapolis and Todd Axtell of St. Paul for leadership in public service.

This year, 2022, the Caux Round Table will present Dayton Awards to Mary and Kris Kowalski of Kowalski’s Markets and to Kyle Smith of Reell Precision Manufacturing.

Our board of directors has established the criteria for selection of an award recipient as:

-CEO of a Minnesota company or similar operational organization.
-Revenue and profits if relevant to mission.
-Community impact if relevant to mission.
-Demonstrated innovation/response to market opportunities.
-Quality of company culture.
-Care of employees.
-Customer satisfaction.
-Environmental stewardship.
-Personal community commitment.
-Company community commitment.
-Vision and prudence: level 5 leadership traits (Jim Collin’s book, Good to Great)

We seek to recognize leadership, not position.  In fact, small and family-owned companies contribute more to the quality of our lives than do large corporations.  Small businesses constitute 99% of all American companies and employ 47% of working Americans.  We have also found that small and family-owned companies are more in touch with their stakeholders than are large corporations, which tend, on the whole, to favor shareholders.  The companies that made Minnesota prosperous with a high quality of life, honest and dedicated public officials and dynamic civil society nonprofits started as family-owned or small companies.

It is the intangible of leadership that counts most for moral success.

There are essential abilities required to lead – integrity, courage, compassion, respect and responsibility:

Integrity is being honest and having strong moral principles.  Having integrity means you are true to yourself and would do nothing that demeans or dishonors you.  Integrity makes you believable, as you know and act on your values.

Courage is strength in the face of adversity and upholding what is right, regardless of what others may think or do.  Courage enables you to take a stand, honor commitments and guide the way.  Courage is a necessary element of responsibility.

Compassion is having concern for another.  It is feeling for and not feeling with the other.  Compassion is concern of others in a more global sense.

Respect is a feeling of deep admiration for someone.  Leaders ought to be respected and they ought to respect those with whom they work.  Demonstrating this perspective is essential to motivate and inspire others.

Responsibility is acting on commitment, will, determination and obligation.  Responsibility implies the satisfactory performance of duties, the adequate discharge of obligations and the trustworthy care for or disposition of possessions.  It is being willing and able to act in a life-enhancing manner.  Responsibility is expected of self, as well as from others.

The nomination of Kyle Smith reported that:

I have never met an individual with more integrity than Kyle Smith.  He holds himself to such a high standard of integrity, beyond what most of us even think about.  He is intentional about everything he does, in business and his personal life.  He is honest and extremely trustworthy.  He knows what he believes and why he believes it and his values are his compass.  He is a humble, servant leader.  Kyle faces into hard decisions.  Many courageous decisions have been made.  In 2009, Reell’s revenue was cut in half.  Kyle became CEO and led the way to greater profitability.  The share price has since grown over 700%.  When he joined the company, the bankers were calling us every day and now we are healthy and debt-free!  Kyle knows the names of every coworker.  His door is always open for anyone to talk about life or work.

The nomination of Mary and Kris Kowalski Christiansen, owners of a family business, reported that:

Mary and Kris became excellent teachers of civic responsibility and the qualities needed to create wealth. They understand wealth as excellence, of which profits are the by-product.  They established a vision, expressed in their mission statement which was developed by “store citizens” and printed on their grocery bags – “Kowalski’s is a Civic Business.”  This is a statement of Kowalski’s continuing commitment to the principles of moral capitalism and citizenship, defined in the company’s educational opportunities for all employees, in the care shown to all stakeholders and in the inclusiveness of the Kowalski mindset regarding their reciprocal duty with the larger community.       

In 1991, Charles Denny, then the CEO of ADC Telecommunications, chaired a presentation by Ryuzaburo Kaku, then Chairman of Canon Inc.  Mr. Kaku spoke of the Japanese business ethic of kyosei or symbiosis, whereby each company thrives due to reciprocal engagement with its stakeholders.  Inspired by Mr. Kaku’s approach, which they found very similar to their own value-based understanding of successful business enterprise, several Minnesotans, including Chuck Denny and Tony Anderson, then CEO of H.B. Fuller, decided to present a set of ethical principles to the Caux Round Table, which met in Caux, Switzerland.  Those principles had been worked out by a group here in Minnesota, including Bob MacGregor and Professor Kenneth Goodpaster of the University of St. Thomas.

The ceremony will tentatively be held sometime in April.

December Pegasus Now Available!

Here’s the December issue of Pegasus.

Last month’s edition directed your attention to the importance of thinking about mindsets.  This month’s issue follows that presentation of which mindsets are most valuable with a discussion of design.

First, we include a short piece by Tom Fisher, the Dayton Hudson Chair in Urban Design at the University of Minnesota, on humanity and panarchy.

Next is an article by Michael Hartoonian, our associate editor, on ethical behavior and moral institutions.

Thirdly is a piece by yours truly introducing a new code of ethics for journalism and why we believe it’s needed.

Lastly, we include a letter to the editor on the business of business.

I would be most interested in your thoughts and feedback.

Happy New Year!

If You Are Looking for a Holiday Gift…

This is that time of year when many seek to show their appreciation of family and friends with thoughtful gifts.

Our colleague, Klaus Leisinger, has written two excellent books relevant to the higher aspirations we seek to encourage at this time of year in many cultures.  We have published them on Amazon.  You might consider ordering one or both as gifts for others or as a present to yourself:

Season’s greetings and best wishes for the coming New Year.

Please Give to the Max!

Here in Minnesota, there is a special day each year for making financial donations to our local non-profits.  It’s called “Give to the Max” and is tomorrow, Thursday, November 17.

There is no geographic prohibition on donors, so each year, we send out a request to you for financial support.

Our case is perhaps more compelling this year.  Many leaders around the world seem to have lost heart and courage.  There is a failure of confidence.  Accordingly, those who look up to leaders seem more worried than before at what they see or rather, what they don’t see.

We are living in trying times – the first significant war in supposedly civilized Europe, of all places; the rejection of Western culture, based on the Enlightenment, by two great powers; ennui at confronting global warming; Big Data supporting the surveillance state; and Big Tech supporting surveillance capitalism.  A recent Zoom round table with a number of our fellows centered on these concerns and the lack of trust, very little of which can be found.

Uniquely, the Caux Round Table has in its principles a synthesis of action agendas, centered on respecting human agency and concern for stakeholders.  This effort can be a new paradigm, fit for global acceptance.  The principles have stood tests of time and season, recession and inflation, scandal and success in the marketplace.

To expand our presence now that Covid restrictions are passing into history, we need your financial help.  Please consider sending us a contribution of US$100.

We plan to resume in-person roundtables, would like to publish several books in 2023 addressing our global crisis of confidence and create educational modules to promote understanding of our principles.

To donate, please visit our Give to the Max page here.  You can also contribute directly to us via PayPal here.

If you would like to mail a check, our mailing address is 75 West Fifth Street, Suite 219, St. Paul, MN 55102.

You can also contribute via wire transfer (hit reply and we’ll send you the instructions).

Contributions are tax-deductible for U.S. residents.

With many thanks and high regards for all that each of you do.

October Pegasus Now Available

Here’s the October edition of Pegasus.

In this issue, we include a piece by yours truly on the overlooked importance of Mussolini and his fascism.  It was 100 years ago, on October 27, 2022, that Mussolini organized his March on Rome.

Next, we include a piece by Michael Hartoonian, our Associate Editor, on how we might prevent the success of “Mussolini-ism” by setting forth a program of education of virtue and responsibility.

Thirdly, Richard Van Scotter elaborates on Michael’s general introduction to a wise education, with an emphasis on civic education.  

Then, Charles Mattioli recalls for us the genius of the Scottish Enlightenment, which was different from the European Enlightenment of Descartes, Voltaire and Kant.

Lastly, Tom Abeles brings forward in time present and time future how education of all persons globally can evolve.  He contrasts the human experience with becoming educated as a fatalistic fall into a pinball machine, where we are small, self-contained little balls “slapped” around by the pins and moved by an unseen mover, with a far more appealing vision of using the internet to balance our individualism with our environment. 

I would be most interested in your thoughts and feedback.

Also, if you have any friends or colleagues you believe would be interested in our work, please feel free to forward this to them.  They can subscribe to Pegasus here

More Short Videos on Relevant and Timely Topics

We recently posted more short videos on relevant and timely topics.  They include:

The Value of Intangible Assets

A World Shifting Out of Balance 

Education as an Intangible Asset 

Morale – The Intangible Asset 

Serving the Common Good

All our videos can be found on our YouTube page here.  We recently put them into 8 playlists, which you can find here.

If you aren’t following us on Twitter or haven’t liked us on Facebook, please do so.  We update both platforms frequently.

September Pegasus Now Available!

Here’s the September issue of Pegasus.

This edition is a little longer than usual.

First, our Fellow, Michael Wright, links our ability to move beyond self and short-sightedness to creating trust – a human capability often abused.

Next, Michael Hartoonian, our Associate Editor, poses the question of whether or not our proclivity to invent and devise technology has grown exponentially to the point where it may start dehumanizing us and eroding the medium of trust, in which we live for the best.

Then, Tom Abeles, one of our local participants, asks us to really think about the future far out there – in space. Is such travel beyond earth’s atmospheric cocoon in our future?

Lastly, retired Professor, John Mauriel, reminds us of one real world example – the creation of the business school – of us developing new ways of analysis, some with short-term focus on realities and others on longer term results.

I would be most interested in your thoughts and feedback.

August Pegasus is Now Available!

In this edition, we include articles on moral capitalism and the middle class and whether theocracy has re-emerged in China.
We also include former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s letter to his mother as it concerns China’s current ruler, Xi Jinping.

I would be most interested in your thoughts and feedback.

By the way, if you’ve missed any previous issues, you can find them all on our website here.

June Pegasus Now Available!

Here’s the June edition of Pegasus.

In this issue, we include an article on opportunity costs and another on recentering moral capitalism.

We also run the MBA Oath, which was founded in 2009 in the aftermath of the financial crisis by graduates of the Harvard Business School to be a Hippocratic Oath for managers.

I would be most interested in your thoughts and feedback.