Stuart A. Miller

Stuart A. Miller (born 1957) is a business executive in the homebuilding industry. He is the son of Leonnard Miller who founded Lennar Corporation, a Fortune 500 company Miller leads today.
Current executive roles
Miller has been Chief Executive Officer of Lennar Corp since 1997 (taking over the reigns from his father) and its Director since 1990. He is also CEO of Lennar Homes of California Inc., Fidelity Guaranty and Acceptance Corp. He is also a Director of: Riley Property Holdings LLC., Union Bank of Florida and Builder Homesite Inc. He has been with Lennar since 1982. He manages the firm with a style that teaches business lessons via Dr. Seuss stories, The Little Red Hen and fairytales!
In his current position as head of Lennar, Miller facilitated the acquisition of many homebuilders - figures were 18,578 homes in 2000, an increase of 47% from 1999, together with a yearly profit growth rate of 31% during the same time period.
His total compensation for 2014 was: $17,909,543.
Employment history
Prior to taking to his current role, Miller held various other key executive roles at Lennar and its subsidiaries. These included: President, Vice President, President of the firm’s main homebuilding subsidiary, President of the firm’s Principal Real Estate Investment And Management Division, Chairman of LNR Property LLC.
Education
Miller has an undergraduate degree from Harvard Business School (1979), and a law degree from the University of Miami (1982).
Philosophy
Miller uses Dr. Seuss as a business lesson. In addition, he believes in adopting a relaxed approach to achieve success, believing that “formalities only hinder the process.” He makes his employees recite The Little Red Hen out loud as it’s long and hard to remember each line, encouraging others to help them. He uses this lesson to encourage the importance of team work. He also tells them all efforts should be their best. A lot of this came from his supervisors who made him repeat his work again and again until it was just right. In addition, he believes one cannot “play it safe” when it a top leadership position. This is not the attitude one takes to be successful. So this means one cannot be afraid to fail. He put that philosophy into practice in the mid-1990s, when he moved into commercial properties, purchasing $1 billion worth of land in California. He explained: “The real estate market had completely tanked and cash was scarce. People thought we were crazy. But we saw value coming back and went for it.” And it worked.
Hurricane Andrew
The 1992 hurricane was estimated as America’s most expensive natural disaster, at around $20 billion. It hit home builders the hardest, with Lennar at the top of the list. This led to numerous lawsuits. Miller committed to deal face every accusation, holding full work-group meetings that began at 6 30am and often continued until 10 00pm. With this dedication, he handled every single complaint.

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