Even before it was clear that Motif Designs had weathered the storm, it was clear that Friberg and Peterson were going to survive theirs. "Because it's so difficult for a husband and wife to work together, we've always tried to treat each other much more courteously and kindly -- both at home and in the office -- than couples and business partners usually do," Peterson says. "I think that helped see us through our problem period and to keep the crisis away from the kids." As for her own micromanagement of the office, it died quickly. "I realized that I didn't like it, and I wasn't nearly as good at it as Karl is."
That's not to say the two don't have their disagreements. "In any equal relationship, there are always power struggles," Peterson says. "Our conflicts are never divorce level -- in fact, our children would be shocked to hear even raised voices -- but we do debate things like 'I spent an hour with him,' 'I did more parenting,' or 'You've got more people reporting to you.' "
"Sometimes I'll complain about doing too much child care over the weekend," Friberg says, "but then I'll remind myself that I don't want to be working an 80-hour week, that the reason I wanted to go into business for myself was to have the flexibility to spend all this time with my family and the people who matter to me."
After agreeing to give the middle-management system a try, Friberg called one of his closest friends from graduate-school days, Bob White, an experienced entrepreneur himself, who was also Peterson's cousin. White was working in Virginia and Tennessee building nursing homes when he got Friberg's call begging him to tackle the troubled warehouse and customer-service operations. "I agreed to come back as a consultant for three months," he recalls, "to see if Karl really wanted me or anyone in the job and to try to size up the problems.
"Sometimes I'll still see Karl afraid of giving me or someone else the room to make a decision and, possibly, a mistake. But on the whole, he's made a real commitment to this new system," says White, who not only stayed on at Motif, but also moved into the couple's house.
Perhaps most important to Friberg and Peterson, they managed to reposition their company for further growth while holding fast to their lifestyle priorities. Together, they work no more than a 70-hour week -- with Friberg usually working 40 hours -- leaving their evenings and weekends free to spend time with their children.
On a typical workday evening Peterson drives home at about five, Friberg an hour later. White cooks a chicken-parmigiana dinner, while Friberg and Peterson take turns talking to the kids about what's happened during their day. Dinner-table conversation focuses on school and the children's social activities -- never business. "When you've got four kids, it's always play with me, talk to me, listen to me, do something with me," Peterson says. "We don't have time to think about anything else -- and we don't want to."
After dinner Peterson heads for the den to dancercize to rock 'n' roll tapes with 13-year-old Anne-Marie and 9-year-old Kris. Friberg reads to Erik, 5, then works with him on a homemade set of flash cards of rhyming words. Kris returns to the dining-room table, notebook in hand, to add some details to a story she is writing. Then it's Peterson's turn to help with the homework, while Friberg and White head downstairs to play basketball and work out on exercise machines. By the time the kids get settled in bed, at around nine, husband and wife spend an hour or so reading or watching television before turning in themselves.
Years ago Peterson tried to use these moments of quiet to discuss problems at the office. "But Karl hated that, because he'd be there at home, and there'd be nothing he could do about those things except worry and lose sleep. So now," she says, "if a problem crops up with a staff person or customer on a Friday afternoon and Karl is away from the office, I don't tell him about it until Monday morning when we're back at work."
Friberg and Peterson also discourage their staff from being obsessive about work. "I remember reading about Charlie Bluhdorn [the late chairman of the board at Gulf & Western Industries Inc.] dropping dead of a heart attack on his corporate jet and just being horrified by that," says Peterson. "We want our people to work out and jog and have time for their families -- not to be here 12 hours a day." And she means it. By 5:15 on a weekday afternoon most desks -- from the room she shares with her father and her children's art projects to the eight computer terminals where customer-service reps work, to the sales office, the design studio, the controller's office -- are empty.
The crisis of '84 brought Friberg back down to earth, rekindling his innate conservatism and leaving him ever so slightly at odds with his wife. Today, sitting in his large, starkly modern corner office, he makes it clear that he is interested in branching out into the overseas market, but he plans to do it slowly. Right now his highest priorities would make all those Harvard Business School professors proud: "Pay off debt. Tighten cash flow. Reduce my family's personal exposure to the business." In contrast, it is Peterson who now wants to diversify into a wrapping-paper division, to license her designs for other home-furnishings products, and to open by the year 2000 a chain of home-furnishings emporiums selling secondhand furniture, licensed products, and her own wall-covering and fabric designs.
Friberg listens patiently to her dreams, smiling all the while, but when he speaks, it's clear the future growth of Motif Designs will be a good bit more controlled than it has been in the past. "Now that I've been through a real business crisis, I've become more cautious," he says. "I want things to progress in a more stable, controlled way." One thing these two definitely still agree on is their lack of interest in selling the business -- which they see as central to their own lifestyle as well as to those of quite a few members of their family -- in all, five of Peterson's relatives now work for the business. "I'm looking forward to having this company when we're in our fifties and things are finally stabilized enough so we can relax," Peterson says.
