The following is an expert from my 2017 book Responsive: What It Takes To Create a Thriving Organization
Doug Kirkpatrick was one of the earliest employees at The Morning Star Company. Founded in 1990, Morning Star would go on to trailblaze self- management in business. But as might be expected of any start-up, let alone one committed to innovative management, the company's early days were intense times.
Morning Star is a tomato-ingredients manufacturer based out of Sacramento, California. The agribusiness and food-processing industries are notoriously old-school, known for strict command and control structures and rigid bureaucracies. The small group of employees who initiated the Morning Star project had a six-month window to start up the first factory and had committed to beginning operations on a specified day and even at a specific hour. They were a high-performance group, and Doug describes those initial weeks as a high state of flow, with each person striving cooperatively to bring the new company into existence. The company consisted of seasoned employees, and Doug, at thirty-four, was considered quite young.
Several months before the factory opened, the owner of The Morning Star Company, Chris Rufer, called a leadership meeting. The Morning Star founder and twenty-four members of the team met on the job site. They pulled steel folding chairs into a circle, and Chris passed around a page titled “Morning Star Colleague Principles.”
The sheet included just two points:
- Don’t use force.
- Keep your commitments.
The group spent several hours discussing what these principles meant. Questions cropped up. What happens if you have to fire somebody? What if someone quits? In the end, no one found a reason to reject these ideas, and every person there had reasons to embrace them.
Together, the group concluded that these two points were necessary and sufficient, and they would make up the core of all human interactions at the company. Adopting these principles wouldn’t change the day-to-day operations of the nascent company, but they’d have clear guideposts by which they’d proceed.
What they perhaps didn’t fully process at that moment (and what Doug has spent his career implementing, first at Morning Star and now with companies all over the world) was the far-reaching ramifications of adopting those simple principles. Consider, for example, that “Don’t Use Force” effectively implies:
- No one can require anyone to do anything.
- No one can unilaterally make anyone do anything.
- No one can fire anyone unilaterally.
- Each person has a voice within the company and each voice is protected; no democracy or majority rules.
- Checks and balances will be inherent.
At the time, it didn’t register how profoundly that meeting, and its eventual outcomes, would impact the team, and its members individually. As Doug said, “What we did would end up being very radical—but we were so busy we didn’t necessarily see it since it didn’t seem immediately to impact our day-to-day lives.” More than two decades later, those principles—don’t use force and keep your commitments—continue to serve as the bedrock of a successful, self-managed company.
Shortly before opening, Doug and his colleagues celebrated his thirty-fourth birthday outside the same farmhouse where Chris Rufer had called that fateful leadership meeting. The company has gone on to become a model of self-management and the world’s largest tomato processor, handling between 25% and 30% of U.S. tomato crops.
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I don’t run a self-managed business, but those two principles have stuck with me ever since first meeting Doug in 2016. Whether in management, sales, or personal relationships, these two simple statements are deceptively profound.
Management – It is possible to run incredibly efficient and effective companies without force. When you set clear boundaries, and stick to them, business works better for everyone involved.
Sales – One of the biggest reasons most of us avoid selling is a lack of clear boundaries. When you don’t use force in sales and are clear from the beginning that any answer is okay, selling becomes easy.
Personal relationships – The only difference between this and any other kind of selling is that the stakes are higher and it’s even more important to not alienate your “customer.” The best personal relationships are also predicated on these two principles.
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3 things I’ve loved this week
Podcast I’m revisiting:
Barbara Corcoran on The Tim Ferriss Show
I’ve never watched Shark Tank, but I’ve seen Corcoran Real Estate over the years — especially since going down my own real estate rabbit hole this spring.
It turns out Barbara Corcoran is hilarious and a firebrand. I just came across this letter, which she wrote after getting rejected for Shark Tank. I revisited this interview on the Tim Ferriss Show. My takeaway: persistence is a superpower.
Book I’m reading:
The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich
I stumbled on this book on Spotify while waiting for a flight last week, and have enjoyed this summer read. The author, a New Yorker journalist, first published these as a series of essays about wealth, inequality, and the lifestyles of the ultrarich.
I particularly enjoyed Chapter 2, which is all about yacht sales and Chapter 3, which is about booking famous artists for private parties.
Product I love:
YouClean Toothpaste Tablets
I’ve been looking for a toothpaste without floride and came across these handy toothpaste tablets. Aside from the fact that I can pronounce all of the ingredients, the handy form factor of a tablet instead of paste means that it is much more convenient to brush my teeth. No unscrewing a container and squeezing out the tube!
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When you're ready, here's how I can help
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Until next week,
Robin
