Page 114 - Cityview Jan-Feb 2017

Knoxville Wholesale Furniture is celebrating 25 years in business, butfor the rst few years, it was touch and go. At the time, he recalls, they had “the worst lines, the ugliest building in town, and little money—none of whatit takes to succeed. It’s like you were invited to Carson-Newman and asked to build a football team better thanthe University of Tennessee.” He had never taken a business class. The only training he received was “in coaching, in teaching, in ministry” he says, which is “greater preparation for being great in business than if I had a doctorate degree in business.”In person, Harris comes acrossmuch di erently than he does in aTV commercial. He is at times full of humor. At others, he relates in detail the success of his business, though he is quick to check his own pride and assert the importance of his family and team. And occasionally he ventures into deep waters to discuss the long-term discipline necessary to cultivate and communicate a culture of success. “If we invest in our people, and our people carry our culture to the customer,” he says, “that gives us an advantage.”This culture can be demanding. At the business, they don’t load the oor withIF WE INVESTIN OUR PEOPLE, AND OUR PEOPLE CARRY OUR CULTURE TOTHE CUSTOMER, THAT GIVES US AN ADVANTAGE.salespeople, an industry practice of hiring 20% more people than necessary. “Weare understa ed on purpose” Harris says. “We ask our best people to do the work of one-and-a-half people. Unashamedly so because they like getting paid like one- and-a-half people.” For Harris, his timein education led him to see loading the oor as bad practice, encouraging high turnover and creating unknowledgeable, undisciplined salespeople.Unless he’s out of town he still comes in every Saturday morning to run the sales meeting. And this is where heconnects teaching and coaching.He calls the sales meeting a kind of pre-game where they develop and invest in their players, “which also means discipline,” he points out. “If they think you care about them, you can discipline them. Care opens the door for discipline and correction,” which in turn leads to that culture of success.“One of the biggest things I want to do is end well,” Harris says, going on to note that “every great coach does their best work in their 60’s. There is a sense of urgency you don’t have when you’re younger.” Harris is 62. He uses Bear Bryant as his chief example of a coach achieving the necessary balance to perform at the highest level: “Coach Bryant was the best there’ll ever be, and it’s because he was the greatest psychologist of all time. If somebody’s ass needed kicking, he kicked it— brutally. If they needed his arm put around ‘em, to love ‘em, he’d do it.”But excellence can’t be de ned in just a few words; it’s an ongoing thing. He repeats a story about how General Neyland, when he was a coach at The University of Tennessee, had a practice where the Vols ran an o -tackle play 100 times in a row. Knowing a few plays well is much better than attempting to112JANUARY FEBRUARY 2017