Every morning, Paul Marsh, the 66-year-old chairman, president, and CEO of Coltrane Farm Equipment & Manufacturing, walked the six flights of stairs up to his office. Although the Kansas-based company’s headquarters had plenty of elevators, Marsh considered the morning climb to be an instrumental part of his stress-management plan. Periodically, he also indulged in the thought that his daily climb was a physical symbol of just how far his career had come—from his first job selling Coltrane products on the road to the top executive post at a corporation that posted $4 billion in annual sales and employed 22,000 people at four divisions in 12 countries around the globe.
A version of this article appeared in the September–October 1995 issue of Harvard Business Review.