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John D. Nichols Jr. led Illinois Tool Works through a tenfold increase in its sales base during his years as the Glenview-based company’s CEO, and was also a philanthropist to institutions including the Art Institute of Chicago, where a bridge to the museum’s modern wing bears his family’s name.
Nichols later led the Pritzker family’s Marmon Group before it was sold to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway holding company.
“He was one of those guys who was not only really good operationally but also was really good strategically. You don’t get that sort of mix with too many CEOs,” said W. James Farrell, who succeeded Nichols as ITW’s CEO and is now retired. “He had the ability to think both operationally in the tactical sense and then strategically as to where we were going.”
Nichols, 92, died of natural causes on June 14 at his Winnetka home, said his son, John D. III.
John Doane Nichols was born in China, where his father oversaw Standard Oil of New Jersey’s office in Shanghai. Nichols Sr. was later the director of the Red Cross in China, India and Burma. The family moved to New Jersey when he was just 9 months old, and he later graduated from Loomis Chaffee, a prep school in Windsor, Connecticut.
Nichols received a bachelor’s degree in behavioral science from Harvard University, where he was captain of the football team. He remained in Cambridge to earn an MBA in 1955 from Harvard Business School, and he served as Harvard’s freshman football line coach.
Nichols served for three years in the Army and then spent 10 years at Ford Motor Corp., where among other things, he had a role in the construction of the Houston space flight center as an employee of Philco, Ford’s microelectronics division.
Nichols worked for several years as director of financial controls at International Telephone & Telegraph and in 1969 joined Aerojet-General Corp., a manufacturer of solid and liquid propulsion systems.
Nichols met his wife in the early 1970s when she was a reporter for Fortune Magazine. The couple met at an Aerojet-General press dinner in California, and married nine months later.
In 1980, Nichols moved to the Chicago area to join Illinois Tool Works as an executive vice president.
“ITW glommed onto me, and I wasn’t interested,” Nichols told the Tribune in 1982. “But the company was sufficiently attractive that, after consulting for it for six months, I decided to join. I like the company’s management style in that it has been a well-run company for a good many years and hasn’t gone away from some basic principles.”
Nichols was promoted to president and chief operating officer in 1981 and then at the start of 1982 became chief executive officer, taking the chairman’s title four years later.
On Nichols’ watch, Illinois Tool Works retained some of its traditional philosophy of having a decentralized corporate bureaucracy with nimble subsidiaries that develop all kinds of products.
“My sanity check on this stuff is whether all these guys are having fun,” Nichols told the Tribune in 1993, referring to the company’s battery of engineers and inventors.
Illinois Tool Works generated $400 million worth of sales in 1982, and Nichols nearly doubled the firm’s revenues in 1986 by acquiring privately held Signode Packaging Systems.
“Obviously we had to change some things as we grew, but we kept the one thing that was inherent in the ITW organization — its simplicity,” Nichols told the Tribune in 1993. “That was the biggest task I had … keeping to the basic structure.”
Farrell said Nichols “wasn’t the kind of guy who told you what to do, but instead he made you think about what you ought to do.”
“And he kept it simple, too. He wasn’t a ‘keep it simple, stupid’ acolyte, but it was, let’s simplify it and let’s have fun. He really wanted you to enjoy the business world,” Farrell said. “That was a great legacy that he left with us.”
Nichols stepped down as CEO in 1995 and as chairman the following year. During his nearly 14 years as CEO, annual sales grew from $400 million to $4.1 billion.
Nichols returned to the business world in 2002, when he was tapped to succeed Robert Pritzker as CEO of privately held Marmon Group Inc., the Pritzker family’s Chicago-based management arm for a diverse manufacturing conglomerate.
After retiring as Marmon’s CEO in 2005, Nichols remained a consultant to the Marmon Group until after Berkshire Hathaway’s Buffett announced in 2007 that his firm would buy 60% of Marmon for $4.5 billion.
Nichols served on the boards of many large firms, including Philip Morris Companies, Household International, Rockwell International and Stone Container Corp.
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Nichols was active in Chicago’s civic community and served on numerous boards. He chaired the board of the Art Institute from 1996 until 2001, and he was vice chairman of the Chicago Community Trust.
Nichols and his wife donated funds for the naming rights to the pedestrian bridge connecting the Art Institute’s Renzo Piano-designed modern and contemporary art wing with Millennium Park. Today, the 625-foot pedestrian bridge, which Piano also designed, is known as the Nichols Bridgeway.
Nichols and his wife also donated the lead gift for Loomis Chaffee’s new theater and dance center, which opened last year and is named the John D. and Alexandra C. Nichols Center for Theater and Dance.
In addition to his wife and son, Nichols is survived by a daughter, Kendra Nichols Wallace; and five grandchildren.
Private services are planned for the fall.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.
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