In 1975, Kay Borel was working in a clerical role at Johnson County Community College while finishing her degree when she spotted a job posting for Marion Laboratories.
Looking back on the arc of her career, Borel summed it up simply: “It was a secretarial position,” Borel said, “and I retired as a director.”
She could not have imagined where the job would lead, but one thing was clear from the beginning: Marion Laboratories had an uncommon culture, known as the “Marion Spirit.”
At Marion Laboratories, those who worked there were called “associates.”
“We were not management and workers, ever,” Borel said. “It was that spirit of ‘just roll up your sleeves and get it done and be part of the team.’”
Titles mattered less than contribution. What mattered, Borel said, was what someone could do. She recalled one manager challenging her to focus on what she wanted to pursue next.
“Don’t tell me what you don’t want to do. Tell me what you want to do,” Borel recalled her manager saying. Her manager and another director then gave her new challenges – opportunities she now believes were designed to see what she could do.
She was soon promoted out of the secretarial pool.
“I owe my entire career success, certainly, to all the great managers and folks that I worked with at Marion Laboratories, and Mr. K’s spirit of, ‘Those who produce share in the rewards,’” Borel said.
Borel said Kauffman reinforced that philosophy through the way he treated associates.
“He knew how to treat people,” Borel said. “It’s pretty rare to rub shoulders with the top person in the company, but I think he enjoyed being accessible.”
His secretary regularly invited associates to meet one-on-one with Mr. Kauffman, an opportunity Borel always accepted. “We’re sitting in his office chatting, just like two regular folks,” she said.
Borel said Kauffman wanted Marion to provide more than jobs. He wanted associates to have economic stability and opportunities to succeed.
Marion associates knew their contributions were valued. High goals were set, accomplishments were recognized, and Kauffman regularly credited the company’s success to its associates. That appreciation showed up in all-associate “Marion on the Move” meetings and in personal letters marking work anniversaries and special accomplishments.
“Marion is your company in a special way. It reflects a creative mix of energy, optimism, and incentive. The ability to blend this into a successful team effort is a time-tested skill at which Marion associates have always excelled, because they care,” Kauffman wrote to Borel in 1987.
The letters arrived on his personal stationery, signed by hand, and mailed to the associates’ homes.
“I actually got a little teary-eyed reading one of them,” Borel said, remembering how Kauffman recognized not only her accomplishments but how far she had come since joining Marion as a secretary.
Borel eventually became a director and managed OS-CAL, the product on which Kauffman had built the company.
Borel also saw Marion’s culture through new eyes during the Merrell Dow merger. “Those folks were in awe of what Mr. K. had built and what we all had as Marion associates,” she said.
Kauffman once asked Borel what she thought the Marion Spirit meant and whether she believed it would endure without him. “Treat others as you would want to be treated,” Borel recalled telling him. And when he asked if the spirit would live on, her answer was simple: “I believe it would.”
Associates carried that spirit into the Foundation and into new roles. “We go out, and we go our various ways, and it’s part of us,” Borel said. “It’s all about how you treat the people. The culture was everything.”