Atmosphere Commercial Interiors partners with its clients to design, furnish, and deliver beautiful places to work. The company can add itself to that list of attractive workplaces, as Mindy MacWilliams has spent 30 years with Atmosphere, the past six as executive vice president–Wisconsin/Illinois.
Most recently, MacWilliams led the Wisconsin/Illinois region to a sales increase of 32 percent, and oversaw the conceptualization, staffing, and creation of a new Eau Claire office in just six months. MacWilliams adapted her business model and initiated the addition of new positions, for an overall staff increase of 22 percent, which has positioned the company for further growth throughout Wisconsin and northern Illinois.
An innovator, MacWilliams developed a business plan and led her teams in converting three regional offices into worklabs that showcase Atmosphere’s flexible workstyles. The worklab model allows business leaders and designers to experience concepts that improve employee engagement and productivity.
MacWilliams also oversees the mentoring and training of new and existing team members. She led the roll out of company-wide core values and helped solidify their regional adoption. And in Atmosphere’s most recent team member engagement survey, MacWilliams’ teams responded with 93 percent positive team member engagement, a 2 percent increase over the company’s previous annual survey.
MacWilliams has led Atmosphere’s Wisconsin/Illinois region as the industry has transformed from clients viewing furnishings as a cost — primarily workstations — to working with clients to help them integrate collaboration, wellness, real estate effectiveness, and employee engagement into their facility goals.
In addition to her leadership role, MacWilliams manages two major client relationships for the Wisconsin/Illinois region. Her clients note that she is “beyond amazing to work with. She never fails to constantly go above and beyond for her clients and makes sure that they are always satisfied.”
That shouldn’t be surprising, given where MacWilliams got her early lessons in leadership.
“I reflect on my early learning days at Rowley-Schlimgen [which eventually became Atmosphere Commercial Interiors] and our late founder Fritz Schlimgen,” explains MacWilliams. “Fritz led by demonstrating his love of community and camaraderie. He taught his employees life lessons such as, ‘If your customers become your friends, you will never feel like you are working.’ We like to think that devotion to customers — and to each other — started with Fritz and lives on in our culture today.”
MacWilliams notes that Atmosphere’s current CEO, Carlene Wilson, joined the company in 2016 and describes her as another wonderful role model. “She has a solid understanding of all aspects of our businesses and leads with passion and compassion. One of her favorite sayings is that she ‘inspects what she expects.’
“This means Carlene trusts her team explicitly and delegates supremely well, but she also checks in to ensure that commitments and outcomes are delivered,” says MacWilliams. “This keeps our organization growing, performing, and exceeding expectations.”
When looking inward, MacWilliams offers an honest appraisal of herself as a leader.
“I will never stop making mistakes,” she says, “but I continue to learn from them. In my early years I think I tried to do too much personally, and now I realize how much more can be accomplished well by partnering with other leaders and teams.”
To that end, MacWilliams says she hopes to pass some of the following leadership lessons to her team and the next generation of leaders being molded at Atmosphere:
- Keep customer needs first and foremost, seeking to understand their point of view.
- Act, as there is no time like the present.
- Communicate directly, but kindly.
- Don’t lose touch with how work actually gets done throughout the organization — stay connected, have empathy, trust others, and show appreciation.
- Invest in talent and lead them by example.
- The goal isn’t to recognize a single star, but to support a constellation of individual talent.
“As you might guess, I feel fortunate to work with great people who really do feel like family,” says MacWilliams. “Working at Atmosphere is a team sport. Many of our customers are long-time partners and I consider many of them friends. It can’t get much better than that! And I am so proud that our Madison office won the “Best Places to Work” award from Madison Magazine in 2019. This award showcases how our team feels about our culture, their dedication to one another, and their overall happiness.
“This nomination and peer selection are such an honor, especially knowing there are so many others as deserving as me,” adds MacWilliams. “I am humbled to receive the award because I am privileged to lead an amazing team who are the ones at the core of our success.”
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