But the true test of Johnson’s succession plan may be yet to come as the family addresses new challenges. Three of the four family businesses depend heavily on commodities; petroleum, for example, remains a chief ingredient in everything from bottles to kayaks. Johnson Financial Group, reportedly posting double-digit growth for the last decade, has its own difficulties as a privately held bank in an industry experiencing rapid consolidation. The industrial products business, JohnsonDiversey, may be hampered by its highly leveraged balance sheet, one of the factors prompting Standard & Poor’s to downgrade its long-term debt to single-B in April.

Their overriding challenge, however, may be living up to the successes—both in business and in their communities—achieved by their predecessors, against whom investors, employees and consumers will judge their leadership. “It’s not easy because these very successful individuals have long shadows, and they have long shadows both in their families as well as in their company,” says Ivan Lansberg, a senior partner with consulting firm Lansberg, Gersick & Associates in New Haven, Conn.

Sleepless in Racine
Spend time with Johnson-Leipold and it becomes evident that she is indeed her father’s daughter. She manages to squeeze in time for events ranging from her youngest son’s basketball practice to a speech at a local Johnson Bank by sleeping only a few hours a night, as Sam Johnson did. The second of the four siblings, she grew up within five miles of SC Johnson’s headquarters, dubbed the “Wax Building,” and her grandfather H.F.’s stunning home, Wingspread, both designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Today she lives down the road from her parents’ house in a large brick contemporary home she built with her husband, Craig Leipold, on the shore of Lake Michigan.

“As long as we keep in our heads what’s best for the companies and family, there’s no argument,” she says.

When she is in Racine, mornings  begin at 4:30 am with weight training. Two hours of tennis at the indoor courts down the road follow. Slim and athletic, dressed in black and white gym shorts, she whacks balls in warm-up drills. During a game with her coach, the ball flies from the center of her racquet with a satisfying pop. At Cornell University, she played number 1 in her junior and senior years; in 1974, her team went undefeated and won the New York state championship. She still puts everything into her game. On this morning, she serves one ball with such gusto that she lands flat on her back.

Neither Sam nor Gene Johnson forced the children into the family business. After graduating from Cornell—as did her siblings, parents and grandfather—Johnson-Leipold craved her own experience. She joined the Chicago office of Foote, Cone & Belding, the advertising and marketing firm that also handled part of the SC Johnson account. Johnson-Leipold began in a training program, never identifying herself or asking for special treatment, according to Mark Pacchini, a friend who worked alongside her and still works on the Johnson account. She spent eight years there until she grew frustrated at not being able to make decisions. The turning point came during a never-ending shoot for a Sara Lee croissant ad. Johnson-Leipold believed they had the shot and wanted to move on. Her client disagreed. At midnight, she called her father. “I said, ‘Dad I need a job,’” she remembers. “He said, ‘Come on up.’”

She had already spent time at the companies. She worked briefly as a teller at the bank her father started. In the Wax Building, she points out the desk she used as an intern, testing new products. A ride to the third floor in the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed wire elevator her father aptly called the “bird cage” leads to a shelf filled with Johnson products—a timeline of wax canisters and polishers.

While Johnson-Leipold appreciates the past, she does not feel bound by it. When she became chairman and CEO of Johnson Outdoors seven years ago, she recommended that the board sell Johnson Reels, a fishing line her father was attached to both because he was an avid angler and it was the first sporting goods company he had purchased. Johnson-Leipold considered it a low-margin business with limited growth potential that failed to meet the longstanding company requirement that it rank first or second in its category. “The first thing I did was sell Dad’s favorite company,” she recalls with a laugh. “But he was good and he listened.”