This week I will be part of a panel discussion on branding, marketing & digital media held at the Bush Brothers & Company campus. Bush Brothers is an incredibly successful, 4th generation-family run business, with a history dating back to 1867.   Although they produce and sell a variety of foods, Bush Brothers  is primarily known for being a company that sells one heck of a lot of beans, all over the world.  In the southeast, where I live, Bush Brothers beans of all kinds have been a much loved culinary tradition for many families over many decades.

Today, the company is widely recognized for the thoughtful way in which it’s still run by the Ethier family, 100 years later.

From a Knoxville News Sentinel story on the company’s recent history:

A $25 million research and development center at its Knoxville headquarters was added. Some $170 million was spent in Chestnut Hill, projects that automated and streamlined production while increasing capacity to ensure the jobs of its 330 employees and then some. The Wisconsin plant also was upgraded.

Investments were made in employees, with an internal Bush University offering a range of seminars including “bean counting,” or how to read the company’s annual report, published for shareholders and employees. A generous tuition reimbursement was launched, as was a profit-sharing plan.

And family members took steps to ensure that A.J. Bush’s descendants would continue to serve as good caretakers.

Family retreats hosted experts to advise shareholders on governance, estate planning and other financial issues. Family members and their spouses also have attended courses on family business at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and continue to do so..

The Family Senate was reconstituted and is working on a policy that rewrites and adds to the family employment guidelines adopted some 25 years ago. The policy requires that family members who wish to take on a leadership role have a college education. Post-graduate work is encouraged, as is career experience before joining the family enterprise. The new proposal “in essence, says again, we love to have the family employed, but in terms of ascendancy in the company, they don’t get any special treatment. This is not an aristocracy but a meritocracy.”

The event in which I will be participating this week is part of the company’s ongoing plan for including all of its employees in regular educational and conversational opportunities related to various areas of Bush Brothers operations. The audience will include everyone from top Bush Brothers execs to maintenance employees, and each person has the same opportunity to ask questions and throw out ideas. I love this. I think it’s a fantastic way to get everyone in a company engaged in areas beyond their own job descriptions, and to identify and grow future company leadership from the inside out.

I am one of five invited panelists; the others are Steve Knox, CEO of P&G’s Tremor, Susan Ashley of Resource Interactive (Bush’s new Digital Agency of Record), Jim Price, VP of Media Innovation from Empower Media Marketing and Jeffrey Kissinger, VP of Interactive Marketing for Scripps Networks. and I am really looking forward to the opportunity to listen and learn from each of these smart and accomplished folks. It should be a fun day, and I appreciate having been asked to join the conversation.