Take one champion-step-dancing mom and a fiddle-playing dad from the Canadian heartland. Add eleven brothers and sisters, eight of whom have more talent than most living human beings, and what do you get? A musical phenomenon called Leahy.
I was lucky enough to catch the opening concert of their 2009 Christmas Tour, and they provided a fascinating glimpse into their amazing world of self-evidently effective self-management.
If you can, watch this clip before continuing:
A few (okay, ten) observations about what makes Leahy so great, and how they relate to self-management in organizations:
1. History and Culture. Leahy (the family’s last name), the band, consists of eight of the eleven Leahy siblings. Before the siblings come onstage, the disembodied voices of their mom and dad are broadcast to the audience. Consisting of random memories of past Christmases on their Ontario cattle ranch, the parents' musings were a cultural touchstone, infusing their performance with power and meaning. They even brought an old couch onstage to recreate the times spent playing music all night long in their family living room—a significant cultural artifact reinforcing their connectedness to the past.
2. Mission. The implicit mission of the band is to share their own obvious joy in playing music with other people. Clear, simple and coherent. There is no doubt that every Leahy sibling supports that mission wholeheartedly and joyfully. Their website says it best: “Leahy (LAY-he): noun, verb, adjective. A family. A musical group of brothers and sisters, a sound, a style of music, a way of life, a volcanic explosion of talent and energy, intense emotion, and feral passion.”
3. Leadership. Donnell, the oldest brother, serves as the emcee and appears to be the chief orchestrator. But those roles do not preclude leadership revolving to the others during the course of the evening. In fact, on any particular song, there may be anywhere from two to eight siblings on the stage performing. They come and go as the needs of the concert dictate, without direction. On singing numbers, the lead singer (usually one of the sisters) takes the reins of leadership, exhorting the band as well as the audience to join in. Leadership in Leahy, during a performance, appears to rotate to the brother or sister with the most “expertise” on a particular song.
4. Strategy and Process. Discussing the approach to constructing a Christmas concert for 2009, Donnell described conversations with his siblings to collect and incorporate their input on how the concert should flow. There is a clear strategy required to put together a concert series. And there is a “business process”, formal or informal, for gathering ideas and executing the strategy. Example: the couch idea came from sister Denise, who insisted on it as a reminder of Christmases past.
5. Collaboration. The siblings demonstrate obvious care and concern—and appreciation--for each other and each other’s gifts, reflected in the collaborative process used to construct their concerts. It would be hard to imagine one of the siblings trying to be a “boss”, directing his or her own brothers and sisters what, where, when and how to practice and perform. Just wouldn’t work.
6. Individual Virtuosity and Execution. Each sibling seems to play multiple instruments, in addition to step dancing (the sisters do most of the singing, however). They are individually recognized as some of the finest individual musicians in the world. Erin, the piano player, is ambidextrous and can play the fiddle upside-down. Amazing, world-class talent, clearly based on tons of practice and hard work. As individuals, they clearly shoot for perfection.
7. Teamwork. Leahy is a wonderful example of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. As individuals, they are world-class virtuosos. Playing and dancing together—in perfect synchronicity--as members of a family who obviously love each other, they create magic. Check out the finale to the video link above.
8. Mentorship. The siblings have an intentional effort to bring along the “next Leahy generation”. To that end, they brought out the six-year-old son of the drummer, Frank, to perform a complex step dance. The young man’s performance was absolutely perfect, triggering a standing ovation. The encouragement of his seven aunts and uncles (and father) was obvious in their broad smiles. It wouldn't have mattered to anyone if he'd made a mistake, since he was obviously shooting for perfection--and got it.
9. Real-Time Feedback, Empowerment. Several times during the performance, a stagehand would dart onto to the stage to adjust a piece of sound equipment, even though the audience could hear no obvious sound glitch. To Leahy, however, there had to be a reason for the adjustments—and they have much higher performance standards than the average concertgoer. Given their level of virtuosity and synchronicity, it seems likely that they have empowered their road crew to deal with perceived glitches in real time. No one needed to be told what to adjust and how to adjust it. They just did what the situation required, on their own.
10. Flat Organization. The band’s name speaks for itself: Leahy. Each sibling is biologically and musically a Leahy, so no band member necessarily stands out above the rest—a quintessential flat organization. Since it would be massively counterproductive to make decisions lacking consensus support (all members are needed to create a full sound), it’s likely that whatever decision-making processes Leahy employs are highly effective in achieving buy-in and focusing group effort.
I encourage you to check out this remarkable family at www.leahymusic.com. Even better, see them live.
What does self-management mean to a person just entering the workforce? For recent college grads trying to break into a rigid corporate colony with an established hierarchy, it can feel like being a serf at a feudal manor. Add a depressing economy and it could seem impossible to excel in one’s fledgling career.
How can one stay motivated in a less-than-ideal job, especially when a promotion isn’t likely, or even possible, for a long time to come?
I have been struggling with this as I do a second internship at a large, well-established publishing company in addition to a part-time retail job. Often I feel, and I am not alone, that even if I do my best work, even if I make myself indispensable to my company, things won’t change. There is too much competition, the economy is too poor, and no company is in a position to promote or create a new job for even a very exceptional person. Is the fear of being fired the only motivation necessary to do a good job? I don’t think so. Some positive goals must be in place. I have been trying to develop solutions for my “career ennui” and it hasn’t been easy. But I hope to strike upon some wisdom that will get me and others in a similar situation through the woods.
Firstly, I have been cultivating a passion for what I’m doing. Even as an intern, I take pride in dressing as well or better than others in the company. I try to maintain utmost standards of professionalism and quality of work to make myself FEEL as if I have the job I want. Luckily, I work with great supervisors who treat me with a great deal of respect and challenge me. However, at my retail job, this is not the case. I work with two other women, both over 60, who know far more because they’ve been on the job over five years. Thus nothing much is expected of me and I find myself growing listless throughout the day. After all, if I push more sales, I won’t get any commission and my boss probably won’t notice because she is never on the sales floor. So why should I? Simply because it keeps me going. For my own sanity, I need to believe that I am important and that my job matters. I struggle with this all the time, but hopefully it will become easier. There are many people right now working at jobs that are beneath their talent and education, and it’s frustrating… especially when there is no end/new beginning in sight. Let’s do our best and get creative!
The Morning Star Self-Management Institute recently interviewed Chris Rufer, the founder of The Morning Star Company and its affiliates, about his understanding of and commitment to self-management in organizations. Here is a partial transcript of the conversation.
Self-Management Institute: So Chris, what caused you to originally determine that you wanted to adopt self-management as an organizing principle for Morning Star?
Chris Rufer: I think it just evolved as I went through life so I don’t think there was any decision to do this. So it evolved and the elements of it evolved and then the theory comes later.
Self-Management Institute: Okay. So how will you know, in your own mind, that self-management is successful as an organizing principle for a business?
Chris Rufer: We’ve identified these elements [elements facilitating effective self-management] and we want to get a comfort level that those elements are firing on all nine cylinders, if that’s the number. So if we’ve got eight, nine, ten key elements we can detect and see if those elements are working. That’s one good indicator. The other indicator is how free people are to actually open up and communicate with each other and cause change within the organization and be free to take initiative.
Self-Management Institute: Okay.
Chris Rufer: And they’re actually taking initiative because they feel unbounded by having to go through various folks to get something done. So it should be easier to get things done through this organization, not harder and that should free people to talk and communicate more and more directly.
Self-Management Institute: Okay.
Chris Rufer: So that’s something you just get a feel for, perhaps, but the measurable things are the elements and how we’re doing along those lines.
Self-Management Institute: Okay.
Chris Rufer: The other one that’s a little goosey is the profitability of the enterprise but much like some criticism thrown at Koch [Charles Koch, chairman of Koch Industries, Inc., the second largest private company in the U.S.] is “well, he’s got his special management system [Market-Based Management] and that’s why he’s successful,” and then you definitely hear the drumbeat of, “well, you know, he’s just – he’s a sharp businessman and he’s getting some businesses right and he made some good business decisions.“ So what are the drivers behind success?
Self-Management Institute: What would have been your biggest sources of satisfaction regarding adopting self-management as an organizing principle?
Chris Rufer: [T]here are a lot of successes so there are a lot of people who actually seem to be…running their operations and they’ve really taken it to heart and taken the full responsibility and they coordinate in the way that we promote – that the philosophy promotes. They are taking the initiative. They flat take the responsibility and it works.
Self-Management Institute: Right.
Chris Rufer: And it works. So those are the most gratifying - where people really do take off and do take the initiative that they can.
Self-Management Institute: Great. Okay. Well, I guess I have to ask the flip side of the question. What would be your biggest frustrations and disappointments regarding the adoption of self-management?
Chris Rufer: Expecting more people to take initiative and more people to run with their ball, [take] their own personal commercial mission and flat run with it instead of complaining or, you know, just not doing it and then coming into the compliances that they see as the cause of their inability to get things done when, in fact, there’s only one thing left in this organization and it’s their initiative.
Self-Management Institute: Um-hum.
Chris Rufer: So – at this point more people in life all over don’t take more initiative to live their lives and accomplish their mission, their personal mission or their commercial mission. So it lays bare people’s leadership skills. It lays bare people’s opportunity to take responsibility and their initiative. They can’t hide around it. I mean, you’re either a true leader or your not because you don’t have that dictatorial authority to cause people to follow you just because you say “follow me.”
Self-Management Institute: Um-hum. Good. We talked about the nine pillars [or elements, the supporting systems for self-management], but what are the biggest opportunities for furthering or progressing the idea of self-management? Do they involve pushing further on the frontier of those nine elements or are there any other opportunities for improved self-management?
Chris Rufer: To me it’s those pillars, or elements, and getting those in place and figuring out how to move into an organization and establish them elsewhere. So in essence, it’s greasing the wheels of people’s productivity and their spontaneity to develop their organizational structure. So it’s pushing on the elements to solidify them so we can then give it a chance and see how it works, because unless people have the tools they can’t do the work.
Self-Management Institute: Okay. Well, if you could go back in time, say to 1988 or 1989, would you have adopted the philosophy of self-management in the organization in the exact same way that you did?
Chris Rufer: Well, when you say in the exact same way it would have to be no because we’re not there yet and it’s been many years working at it but, conceptually, I have no problems with it, yes, and I’d do the same thing.
Self-Management Institute: Okay.
Chris Rufer: I’d spend more time with the organizational elements versus the business elements but that’s just my personality. There’s, perhaps, more quick results or identifiable concrete results when you build a factory versus the organization advancement. But I would spend more time with the organization.
Chris Rufer: In retrospect, you could just divide the time up and say spend more time at it and that would have been obvious. I could have done that but at the expense of other things.
Self-Management Institute: Right.
Chris Rufer: But I spent a reasonable amount of time at it. I specifically remember developing a the CLOU [Colleague Letter of Understanding, an agreement between colleagues establishing expectations for performance], Steppingstones [the Morning Star rubric for business performance metrics] but it’s me doing it, versus me and selected others advancing these things and not the organization kicking in and more people kicking in to get it done.
Self-Management Institute: Okay. Do you think that effective self-management in an organization depends on the interpersonal skills of the individuals in the organization?
Chris Rufer: Depends would be to harsh because that means that it’s the sole factor but certainly there’s certain interpersonal skills would benefit it go faster and maybe work better.
Self-Management Institute: Okay. What interpersonal skills would you consider critical to effective self-management?
Chris Rufer: It’s the communication that everybody talks about but I think behind that communication is people’s feeling of self-worth, their self-respect and I think that gives people the opportunity – the ability to communicate well. So the answer is, obviously, communication. To me it’s obvious the communication skills so can I – can you talk to someone. But it’s communication skills, well, how well they talk? Can they use words? Do they understand words? Can they speak well? It certainly goes much deeper than that because it goes into one’s ability to approach another person and approach the other person with some reasonable confidence in what they’re going to say and how – and what they want to get across and that gets back into their own self-respect and self-worth that they feel. People that feel good about themselves have fewer issues in approaching other people…they’re much more willing to stand up for what they believe.
Self-Management Institute: Okay.
Chris Rufer: So that would help right there where people just have a decent faith of – in their ability to do, basically, what they’re assigned to do – what they’re expected to do.
Self-Management Institute: What does work have to do with love?
Chris Rufer: They’re both – to me they’re both commitments.
Self-Management Institute: Okay.
Chris Rufer: Yeah, can you commit to these things? The basic understanding is when we come together as organization to commit to those principles and it will be successful to the degree we are committed to the principles, commitment implying that they’re followed through on.
Self-Management Institute: Um-hum. To what degree has the philosophy of self-management contributed to the financial success of Morning Star?
Chris Rufer: I think quite materially, personally.
Chris Rufer: And we’ve done a lot of things with fewer people and we got some things done very, very quickly and in building new factories with people coming on board to operate those factories and it’s basically maybe the winter, more like the spring before we start a factory and then getting the factory built without, you know, any boss system and hiring folks to take a personal commercial mission. This is your deal whether it’s electrical or evaporation or accounting and that’s your deal and the mission’s pretty clear and go for it. And it all happened. Those people spontaneously came together to work to make something happen and it happened fast. So I don’t know how fast when you look at our picture it’s pretty fast and I know one guy we worked with, a medium-level contractor sent me a plaque saying, you know, The World’s Fastest Factory Builder.
Self-Management Institute: Right.
Chris Rufer: They have more freedom to go after it. To do what they feel is right to accomplish the mission, their mission. And their missions accomplished add up to the accomplishment of the mission of the enterprise. Or not.
Self-Management Institute: Do you perceive any downside or risk in adopting a philosophy of self-management in business?
Chris Rufer: Well, obviously if you want to get something done in a very quick manner decisively, you know, you’ve got to really just be the dictator on the deal but, you know, the previous answer was contrary to that. So I think it’s a little more perspective. If you have something very, very fast you want to get done and people don’t have time to understand their personal commercial mission and to development arrangements with the other folks involved well, then they don’t have a mechanism for coordinating.
So the power and a little bit of the negative on self-management is that it defines a method to attain a structure, to develop a structure. It’s not the definition of a structure or lack thereof. It’s a method of attaining the structure, and through spontaneous order.
Okay, that – while the word spontaneous is there which sounds like right now it’s not. It takes some time if you’re going to develop an intricate organization, an intricate task, a task which requires a lot of interrelationships so that – and that takes time like, you know, getting married and really getting familiar with the person you married. It’s a whole different thing when you’re really committed and you’re really living together all the time.
So that takes time to evolve so that people can get those relationships. But then when those relationships developed in that manner, in a spontaneous manner, they’re more effective because they come about naturally and I think there’s a stronger, stronger bond and a closer understanding that people have to develop between themselves that make their communication now much more effective and it’s built – they develop their relationship and there are a lot of relationships and they all depend on trust. So they develop – the degree that bond has developed and it’s developed well there’s a strong moment of trust and that trust extends to all the people around them that have to make things work.
So when it’s the ‘boss to subordinate’ deal the strings are the boss to subordinate. The subordinates don’t have – they have a relationship and the boss told them that they need to relate to this other person but it’s been – it’s an artificial relationship. It’s a forced relationship. So I think it’s – and certainly those relationships many of them will develop just as well but it’s harder to develop those relationships as strong as it is when you take the personal responsibility and you develop the relationship.
So I think, in the short term, it can be a negative but that’s very, very short term. In any practical sense we’re talking about the business, there is time to develop those relationships and now you have a stronger organization with stronger – the picture on our brochure there with the brain, the neurons.
Self-Management Institute: Neural network.
Chris Rufer: All that neural network is stronger because it’s been developed in a spontaneous manner. Spontaneous really means, you know, one-on-one. Not fast, maybe, but just one-on-one. So those neurons do have a relationship with the next neuron, not that those two neurons are related to some other neuron that’s farther away.
Self-Management Institute: Um-hum.
Chris Rufer: I just don’t know everything [as a boss assigning work relationships] as far as the nuances and how people work together and all their skills – their skill sets, their characters and whatnot. So when you allow it to develop spontaneously all those nuances are taken into consideration. All I mean – more nuances are taken into consideration in those relationships and in your actual activities, you know, whether I do this or I answer the phone in these circumstances or you answer the phone in those circumstances in the front office or I do this work or you do that work. And if it’s a little freer so, hey, you know, I’m doing this but, you know, it doesn’t – it seemed to be very efficient if you did that. What do you think? And they change their structure themselves. That to me develops a much more stronger set of relationships. How can the big boss understand all those nuances of how the personalities work together moment-to-moment? He’s not there. So he can’t take those things into consideration when assigning duties.
Self-Management Institute: Do you perceive a moral dimension to the philosophy of self-management in addition to the fact that it helps a business be more efficient and effective?
Chris Rufer: Well, it’s the philosophy of morals here so to me moral – what’s right, that depends on – that goes back to – to me people’s mission is to be happy and I think most people find that to be the case that the drive is to be happy, make their choices out of considering what’s going to make them happiest, over time.
[I]t’s kind of the net present value of happiness and…how they find happiness in their life, whether it’s smelling roses or smelling asphalt or hitting a golf ball. That’s an individual deal. Because they’re there to pursue happiness for themselves.
But when they’re related to another person the question is how do they relate to another person and what principles underlie that relationship? And I feel that the basic principle between two parties would be: to the degree that they don’t initiative physical force against each other or other’s property, in other words their relationship with the other person is totally voluntary and vice versa, well, then give both parties the opportunity to maximize their happiness.
So now what’s more moral is an action that’s in concert, an action vis-à-vis another person that is in – which is in concern with those principles or that principle – the principle of initiating force against another person or property. You don’t hurt somebody. You don’t steal their stuff.
So to the degree an act is in concert with those principles, it is moral and that’s my only definition of what’s moral and what’s not and just saying that is moral that act is not moral. How is it in concert with those principles?
So relative to self-management it goes along with that. So maybe it’s a step removed and well, I as a boss, am I forcing you to do something because I’m telling you to do something? Well, you know, directly yes, indirectly, at least in America today, you can walk off a job.
Self-Management Institute: Right.
Chris Rufer: You don’t have to do what they tell you to do. So it’s not the same force and coercion that I was talking about which maximizes human relationships. It happens with either party in a human relationship. But it’s very similar. So not forcing one to do something to do something that you want them to do is a fundamental underlying principle of self-management, a characteristic of self-management. So the principle is to request, is to ask another party to change their ways or do something for you so that it’s a very similar principle.
Self-Management Institute: Um-hum. Right.
Chris Rufer: And I feel there is definite benefit to asking versus telling and you go back to the question you asked before about is there a negative there well, the timeliness of it, you know, if you’ve – the boat’s coming someone’s way and you ask them and explain why maybe they should get out of the way, I don’t know. So [there are] circumstances you can dream up where force would be more efficient, but over time, relationships, in 99.99 percent of the cases asking would be better. You get a mutual result.
Self-Management Institute: Um-hum. Okay. Lots of books and articles coming out these days, people talking about aspects of self-management, freedom at work, et cetera. What do you think is driving that in society?
Chris Rufer: Well, to the degree it’s real and people are driven to this to me the driver has to be people want to be happy. They want to fulfill their mission. They’re going to be happier when they have freedom to do what they want to do, constrained by the principle of not aggressing against another person.
So it’s very fundamental to human happiness is the drive to be reasonably free in what they do. And people who are going to break a couple molds and they’re going to think a little differently and really make some progress without the freedom they – they’re not going anywhere and they’re not happy about it.
So people with active minds their minds are wandering in the space and they’re wandering out and they’re asking some questions and to the degree they’re constrained from acting on their thoughts they get frustrated. They’re not productive. So if they’re forced to stay in certain bounds of thinking which constrains them, you know, just pull on the dog where the dog doesn’t want to go and what do you get? Same thing, a lot of resistance, resentment, etc.
Self-Management Institute: A lot of writers describe, Steven Covey described maturity as a balance between compassion and the ability to confront other people. How important is the element of maturity in a self-managed organization?
Chris Rufer: Well, in the human relationship part it’s very important. So to the degree you can that that’s a skill, somewhat innate but it’s also somewhat learned, of how to deal with folks and you’ve got to deal with it but deal with compassion and that’s a great way to go.
Self-Management Institute: Um-hum. You used a scale from time to time of a balance, a spectrum between innovation and implementation. How important are both of those elements to a successful self-managed organization?
Chris Rufer: I don’t think it’s any different than any other organization but it’s a theory or thought that you’ve got to have innovation if you’re going to advance as an enterprise and for long-term viability you’ve got to execute on a day-to-day basis if you want viability today and to the degree you’ve got both you can be successful over a long period of time.
The execution allows you to be a performer today which, hopefully, generates profits which can fund the innovation which if you don’t innovate your business is going to go away sooner or later because you’ll be a has-been. There won’t be a requirement for the business. Even if there’s a requirement for the product if you didn’t innovate on how you make the product you’ll fall behind and go out of business.
Self-Management Institute: Um-hum.
Chris Rufer: So that’s the same for every business, though.
Self-Management Institute: I’ve heard colleagues, from time to time, describe different cultures of different factories and even different cultures within different parts of different factories. Do you notice that at all and if so what do you think might account for that?
Chris Rufer: Yes, I notice it. Now, if it’s not the people, at this point, it’s having implemented our nine elements and if we had fully implemented the nine elements, would that relatively change things? Yes, I agree it would.
But there’s some folks that just want to get along to go along, they go along to get along, I mean, and some folks who are willing to step outside the box and think differently and they’re more competitive and from what I’ve seen, it’s pretty much been something that’s ingrained in those folks when they came to Morning Star.
First, it’s those that came as a group. In other words, we took over another facility and acquired these folks and they already had a social structure. Haven’t been able to change those – have not been able to change those structures and even those folks that gravitated to another facility, they’ve maintained some of those same characteristics.
Self-Management Institute: Um-hum. Very interesting.
Chris Rufer: There – I mean, there’s – I mean, people develop their social – I mean, they’re a paradigm of the world and once that paradigm in their world is pretty well set, you know, moving off the mark is pretty tough. Either way. Either they’re the innovative free thinker who never really was very happy in a particular job or environment. It wasn’t a job but it was a social environment they were in. They were always rambunctious or whatnot and then they came here and, wow, this is all right.
Self-Management Institute: Um-hum. Very good.
Chris Rufer: Then those that need [to tell others what to do] or need someone telling them what to do so, you know, a few of those folks have gotten out of that trap.
Self-Management Institute: Um-hum. Good point. Speaking of leadership what characteristics would the ideal leader have in a self-managed entity like Morning Start, personal characteristics?
Chris Rufer: When I finally hear of someone who can survey, you know, they’ve got a particular mission. There’s always a personal mission, okay, but on a business mission they come into a business and they get a general set of responsibilities but they’ve got a mission. They survey their environment. They select a course of action and then they advocate that course of action and recruit supporters for that course of action and they’re driven to achieve it and they don’t take no for an answer easily.
Self-Management Institute: Um-hum.
Chris Rufer: So you’ve got to have, again, back to the characteristics of the person being successful in their organization or communicating, they’ve got to have some faith in themselves. If they feel good about themselves and they’re not afraid to go out and expose themselves a little bit because when you throw out a new idea it’s different and you’re advocating a new idea you’re exposing yourself to a lot of criticism, for sure. So if you don’t have that self-worth you don’t last in that position very long. You fall back into advocating the safe position or well, gee, I’ve only convinced one person and there’s ten people “I – I – I – there’s no way.” And so they give up.
Self-Management Institute: Right.
Chris Rufer: But if you believe in your position because you’ve walked through it yourself, you made that selection on what your position’s going to be and then you begin to advocate it, the next thing you need is you need the persistence which requires that self-respect to continue to persist in trying to achieve what you want to achieve. So that’s a true leader. If they don’t have the element of, you know, you can select what you think to be a good course of action but you don’t have the guts to go out and expose yourself to have a certain position you’re not that natural leader and you’re not going to lead.
Self-Management Institute: Yeah.
Chris Rufer: So they need to have that because I’ve seen several instances in the company where we’ve had a number of parties in the – that have come from other organizations with – generally vice president titles have failed here because their capabilities were exposed, true capabilities were exposed.
They didn’t have the hammer of “you will do this” and they could not, then, gather the troops, they couldn’t gain the followers because they did not have the true innate – innate is probably the wrong word – they didn’t have the leadership characteristics. They weren’t true leaders. They were people anointed leader and when they got out of officer candidate school or business school or whatever school they got out of because they had the – you know, they were handsome or pretty, they got the lingo, they’re smart – they’re smart but their mindset is more political. It’s more political.
And so they’re more concerned about the backside and advancing through political means because for some reason that’s their characteristic or that’s how they’ve been taught or what it is, I don’t know, but they’ve been given, because they have all these characteristics, the management positions.
Now, their management training program or whatever it is and it goes from the company and if they’re – they have to be good, they have to be sharp an they have to do some good things, for sure, but they arise in the company and it’s just a higher element of politics than there is in “self-managed organization.” And they don’t have to – they’re seldom when they’re in larger companies have to get down and really sweep the floors so they don’t know how to sweep the floor.
So without the dictatorial authority to tell somebody to sweep the floor the person who actually can sweep the floor and is willing to sweep the floor actually looks at them in a different manner. It’s like, who are you? And it’s either you’re an ass or you know, can you show me how to sweep the floor and, yep, grabbed it and showed them and say, yeah, this and this is the way I do it now. And there’s better ways to do it, too, but you know, that was what worked for me. Well, where’d you do that? Oh, I swept floors all – you know, for a year and a half in the Navy.
You know, and then they get a relationship with this people that, well, I respect this person because he does have some talent and he doesn’t have that talent, he shows respect for the people. He listens to them and he gains their support.
So there’s a natural leader versus the dictatorial one that’s just when they’re asked to, you know, can you sweep it’s like, I don’t do that. Well you lose people’s respect real quick with that attitude.
Self-Management Institute: Um-hum. I’ve heard you describe, several years ago, describe a desire for a family feeling in the organization. In what ways is a workplace like a family and how – what role does self-management have in sustaining that feeling?
Chris Rufer: With the concept of self-management, again, it’s spontaneous order and you develop your relationships and as I discussed before I think that builds more trust and that’s more commitment and as I defined love, that’s commitment. So in essence it does build on and so when I say family it’s the kind of commitment you have to your family members.
You know, you truly have a commitment to the human beings involved in the organization and that’s a “family feeling” or “family organization.” That’s not necessarily by a name or blood but it’s by the commitments that you’ve made and the trust you’ve built up with folks. So that establishes that commitment to the other people.
Again, this is – the company’s an abstraction. It’s just people. That’s all it is. That’s all it is. It can’t be anything else and so people that just say oh, yeah, the important things in people, you know, can he write? Well, of course. The company’s important, the people, you know, breathe air. So what? Everybody knows that.
But that’s all it is. It’s people. And so to the degree they have a commitment to each other and with that commitment, kind of, love you might say for each other you’re going to be more open and you have a commitment to help somebody and that, you know, they’re – the zipper’s undone you tell them.
I mean, just be kind. I mean, just do the right thing. You’re embarrassed a little bit here and there but take the little more risk because you feel that the other person also “loves” you. I mean, they’re committed to you, too. I mean, your friend.
So I think it has a potential of developing more closely – close bonds between you.
Self-Management Institute: Okay. If self-managed – if a self-managed enterprise is firing on all cylinders with all nine of the pillars just redlining and running great, are there – do you perceive any inherent barriers to scaling up an enterprise? I mean, could an enterprise become the size of, you know, General Motors or are there any –
Chris Rufer: There’s no question about it because that’s the way – people are self-managed in their personal lives and we have America, okay, we have Los Angeles or we have large, you know, groups of folks out there organized in that manner. I mean, the traffic, you know, it’s all self-managed. You find, you know, the nuances of taking this street and this shortcut and that road and whatnot and it all, you know, works out and very efficiently. So the world is organized like this right now so these things about governments or managements [needing hierarchy] to X degree is artificial, frankly. And when you look at the natural world and other animals it works under “self-management” principles.
Self-Management Institute: Right.
Chris Rufer: Birds, ants.
Self-Management Institute: So and they certainly – if ants can scale up I’m sure human beings can do it.
Chris Rufer: Yeah. Well, that’s my faith in the elements, “the elements of self-management” and that’s why it’s so important that we establish those because when you read the book "Ants at Work" [Deborah Gordon, Free Press, 1999] to me it gets down to those ants, now genetically in this case, have a few basic principles. And with those few basic principles, followed rigorously, you have basically a very complex system but a very resilient system, as ants are.
But they have a few, I mean, a few basic principles that’s genetically hardwired, you know, and genetically hardwired, well, they can’t really preach those principles. When they see this they do that. When they smell this they do that. When they touch this they do that. So they’re very rigorous on the application of those principles.
Humans have the advantage and the disadvantage of having brains and thinking so to the degree we can determine and find the principles of nature, how the world works, how people work and then apply those principles, rigorously, we do well. So when you keep two feet on the ground it’s great. When you walk in off the side of the Sears Tower in Chicago and just keep on walking thinking that you can walk on air, it’s [death] because gravity works. When we do not understand those principles we have problems. We build house that fall down. We build bridges that fall down, et cetera.
So the ant story is really about the principles and there’s few – but it’s very few and the anti-complexity theory it’s really just a few principles but let them run and you get unbelievably complex looking, in fact, they’re complex results whether it’s just looking at rocks and how they developed or the sky and the colors and everything – very complex patterns but from very simple principles, snowflakes. I mean, snowflakes [are unique] and supposedly there’s no two of the same. Basic principles. Very fundamental basic principles but the result is they’re highly agreeable.
Self-Management Institute: Um-hum. Okay.
Chris Rufer: So as far as can it evolve I don’t have any problem with that. People have to resolve that these are the basic principles and we will use them and are committed to using them and they use them routinely so they just agree to follow those principles, life works better. So these are organization principles and they’re social principles, personal principles, physics principles.
Self-Management Institute: Good. Morning Star has a mission and the mission references its customers who pay the bills for its products and services. How important is it to insure that colleagues in the self-managed enterprise have a line of sight to an ultimate customer and understand why they’re coming to work every day?
Chris Rufer: It’s crucial but there [are] different missions. There’s a mission of an enterprise, a whole enterprise and there’s their personal commercial mission, which is most important for them. So when they come to work that’s what they should be thinking of, you know, where they understand the mission of the whole enterprise, that’s nice. That’s good. Is it crucial relative to their personal commercial mission? In other words, shipping rail cars with tomato paste out of this facility and doing it safety and efficiently and whatnot. I mean, if they accomplish their mission like the one ant, we’re in good shape.
You know, they’re just looking out enough that they can see the next ant, in other words, the next person that they relate to in the company and they’re abiding by those commitments that they make, yeah, I’m going to do this and I’m going to go get these containers out of the warehouse and I’ll be safe with this forklift and I’m going to put this product into the railcars or trucks in a certain manner using these materials. But I need to deal with the forklift supplier and I need to deal with my [fuel] supplier and I need to deal with the railroad and I need to deal with some other folks in the warehouse, my colleagues, that they’re going to put things away like we’ve agreed to put them away. So I need a handful of folks to fulfill their commitments and then I do my trip, you know, my gig, all great.
So if he can see his own mission and see the ones that directly impact him that’s enough, I believe, for a spontaneous system to work. You don’t have to see the big mission. It’s great. It’s good and those that are seeing a larger viewpoint of what’s going on with the enterprise to understand the mission, that mission, is very important.
Self-Management Institute: Okay.
Chris Rufer: That’s just a different level of what your mission is. So you have a mission, yes.
Self-Management Institute: Are you saying that the ultimate mission kind of takes care of itself as long as all the players are paying attention to their personal commercial mission?
Chris Rufer: Exactly. No one ant – how much they think, they don’t think to speak of, not in our framework – and they certainly don’t think of the mission of the ant colony which, gosh, is there a mission to an ant colony? I don’t think there is other than, maybe, survival. The colony’s an abstraction so it’s not – it just doesn’t have a mission. Now, the ants individually have missions and to be happy and they’re doing their thing without thinking. That results in their happiness.
Self-Management Institute: This is a little compound question. So what books, magazines, thought leaders, academics, people, have influenced your thinking about self-management?
Chris Rufer: I can’t rattle off a lot. We just talked about "Ants at Work" and that was an important one. "The Game of Work" [Charles Coonradt, Gibbs Smith, revised 2007] was an important one. I have to go back and, you know, think about it. Koch’s book [The Science of Success, Charles Koch, Wiley, 2007] and his thinking was important – is important. But I can’t rattle off ten or twenty and as far as thought leaders I mean, nobody’s been dead on what we’re talking about but, you know, a lot of what I read of course relates to business but it’s kind of like Peter Drucker does a lot of organizational stuff so there’s a few that hit – strike cords but I can’t rattle off a bunch of names other than what we’ve already talked about it just off the top of my head.
Self-Management Institute: Okay. Last question, do you see an effective self-managed organization as an end or is it a means to another end by successful business results or is it both?
Chris Rufer: For me?
Self-Management Institute: Yes.
Chris Rufer: To me it’s an end. So to get the philosophy of working, the principle’s working and have an organization where you’ve got material quantity, folks that are bought in and actively working it, that would be an end in itself.
Self-Management Institute: Excellent. Thank you.
Thankfully, most people don’t experience a sudden shift from feeling normal to the scary, distorting depersonalization depicted in Norwegian expressionist painter Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream”. But the notion that one’s personality can change (unlike eye color and voice) is gaining some traction. There are important implications for organizations.
In selection and development processes for all kinds of organizations, psychometric testing plays an important role. Unsurprisingly, these processes are critical in self-managing organizations, where management decision-making authority is widely distributed to and assumed by its members. Those members, in turn, shoulder a very high quantum of responsibility and accountability. Organizations--all organizations--must deploy solid processes to select, develop and acculturate people in their unique ecosystems.
Ipsative (self-referential) and normative (comparative) tests and test vendors populate the human resources landscape, selling millions of instruments each year and producing vast reams of data on every conceivable personality characteristic. Industrial psychologists consult with thousands of companies on how best to select people, develop leaders, and blend teams.
Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, in an article titled Can Personality Be Changed?,i says that beliefs play a critical role in how a person functions. People can have either a “fixed” belief (what she refers to as “entity” belief), meaning that they believe that one’s characteristics are stable and fixed, like eye color. Other people have what she refers to as “malleable” beliefs, meaning that basic attributes can be developed. Her research indicates that those with a malleable belief system are more open to new learning, more willing to stick with difficult tasks, more willing to confront challenges, and better able to bounce back from setbacks.II And those qualities make a big difference in a high-performance business environment where time pressure, conflict and relationships are constant challenges.
Dweck cites research showing the malleable mindset can be taught.III Aronson, Fried, and Good (2002) performed a study with several college students. Students in the experimental group watched a film showing how the brain makes new connections and grows in response to challenge. They also wrote a letter to a struggling fellow student describing how intelligence can expand through work. At the end of that semester, the college students exposed to the concepts of malleable intelligence (compared to two control groups that did not) placed a measurably higher value on academic achievement, enhanced joy in their academic work, and higher grade-point averages.
Researchers Peter A. Heslin and Don VandeWalle note in a recent article Managers’ Implicit Assumptions About Personnel,ivreferring to Dweck’s findings, that entity theorists’ implicit assumption that personal attributes are largely stable leads them to quickly form strong impressions of others that they resist revising, even in light of contradictory information. Their own research demonstrated that the mindset (fixed vs. malleable) of managers in a nuclear power plant played a huge role in the degree to which they acknowledged improved performance in subordinates. Is it possible that this concept contains some large ramifications for performance appraisal processes?
In an article by Jeanna Bryner entitled Study: Your Personality Can Change (and Probably Should),v she writes: “Dweck and her colleagues have shown that “when you change the belief, a lot of important things happen: students’ motivation turns around; their grades and test scores go up; managers become better mentors, more successful negotiators.”
Bryner continues, quoting Dweck: “Individuals with fixed ideas about their personalities don’t try to resolve conflicts. Why bother? ‘They just try to either ignore [the conflict] or when it gets really bad they consider leaving the relationship.”
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i Dweck, Carol, Current Directions in Psychological Science, December 2008; vol. 17, 6: pp. 391-394.
ii Ibid.
iii Ibid.
iv Heslin, Peter A., and VandeWalle, Don, Current Directions in Psychological Science, June 2008; vol. 17, 3: pp. 219-223.
v https://www.livescience.com/9507-study-personality-change.html
vi Ibid.
Why does it seem that people hate paying taxes? Taxes are a pretty divisive issue politically, at least here in the United States; some think taxes should be higher, some that they should be lower. But I've never met anyone who was excited about paying taxes. Why?
I have two hypotheses:
First, free-will is important. At some level, I believe that everyone wants freedom of choice over what they do. Taxes aren't exempt from our drive to have control over those things that are important to us. It was the fuse that set off the American revolution; "No taxation without representation" was essentially a rallying cry for those who wanted at least representative control over the taxes they were to pay.
As evidence, in a 2001 poll, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was ranked as the least favorable government agency (out of 20 total agencies--ranging from NASA to the CIA to BATF). In a 1996 Roper poll, 66% of respondents indicated that they felt either "Dissatisfied", "Angry" or "Boiling" when asked about doing their taxes. Interestingly, though, when asked what bothered them most about taxes, 71% of respondents indicated they were more bothered by how the government used their taxes than they were about the amount they paid in taxes. It's a control issue; it's the idea that "this is my money, and you can never do as good a job as I can in spending it".
Second, I think most people are accustomed to the traditional "customer/supplier" relationship. We are conditioned to expect an exchange in most commercial relationships: we give money in exchange for goods and services--or we provide goods and services in exchange for money. We like the idea of trade, and it's the basis of our commercial interactions.
But Americans long ago stopped acting as if taxes were simply an exchange of money for government services. There's clearly a portion of the taxes that are paid that represent each payer's proportional costs for some public services, but there's also a transfer of wealth mechanism that involves those with higher income paying for programs benefitting those with lower incomes.
A 2011 poll of Americans found that 60% of taxpayers felt that they were getting "a bad deal" when asked what they felt about the government services they receive in exchange for their taxes. This notion of exchange is an important one; people like to feel that they're getting what they pay for; and people don't like to pay for things they aren't getting.
I'm not interested in a political argument here--the issue here isn't whether we should pay more or less in taxes; the issue is the remarkably negative sentiment that most Americans seem to have regarding taxes. I know this idea of "exchange" is a hairy one; someone will say that, in an abstract sense, the wealth transfer mechanism is a payment for the government's service of providing a civilized, first-world society; and someone else will argue that government doesn't have a monopoly on doing things to eliminate poverty, taking care of destitute children and providing access to education. I don't want to have that argument here; the simple point here is that there is general dissatisfaction with the "deal" people feel they're getting; they feel it's not a fair exchange.
So what does this imply about human psychology, and more specifically, about human organizations? First, that the idea of control is an important one; people hate being forced to do something--even if it's something they would otherwise probably want to do. I should point out that even the most anarchist anti-governement folks out there value safety, harmony, a civil society, overall human happiness. Nobody wants a country devoid of those things. And there are countless Americans who, on one hand, bemoan the taxes they pay, and on the other, give impressive amounts of money to charities that work every day to solve human problems all over the world; people don't have a problem investing in things to make the world a better place--they just want to be able to make the decision on their own.
And people in our organizations simply want to be able to have control over how they do what they do. I've found that if people really, truly have freedom of control over their work, they tend to flourish. And, interestingly, you can often approach them and propose a change in the way they're doing things--propose it using reason instead of force--and they'll usually change what they're doing, quite willingly, by choice. Control over others is not the only way to accomplish things in organizations: it's expedient, but the societal side-effects are terrible.
And the idea of choice: people don't want to be trapped in a relationship that's not a real exchange. If they aren't getting their money's worth, they want alternatives. If their public school isn't doing a good job of educating their children, they want to be able to take the money they pay for public schooling, and use it to pay for a private school.
The same is true in an organization: people should understand that if they aren't receiving excellent service from others within your organization, they have the option to seek out an alternative way to achieve their mission. The organizational structure cannot be so rigid that the notion of choice is foreign. There's a beautiful tension that arises when all parties understand that we have choices--we have alternatives. Suppliers become focused on providing excellence in service, and customers are more engaged, because they know they aren't captive to their current supplier.
A few years ago I was convinced that I wanted to be a business school professor. I spent a lot of time researching various PhD programs; met a lot of professors (most of them are pretty incredible, creative people); read a mountain of academic literature (I still like reading research articles); and even went so far as to take the GMAT (the required admission exam).
I've since decided that academia might not be the course for me (at least at the moment), and although I've maintained most of my academic relationships, I've become a little disillusioned with business academia and I'm more than a little convinced that very little innovation in the way we build our organizations will come out of academia.
I should probably give you a bit of background.
I've spent the better part of the past six years working on building better organizations. I think my academic aspirations came, in part, from my belief that academic training would better equip me to make progress on that front. In theory, I guess it's possible that a PhD program might enable me to make greater progress toward my Mission, but in reality, it's very unlikely. First, there's the process of getting a PhD in Business:
A business PhD takes, on average, 5 years to complete. Your first two years in the program will be a lot of coursework; some portion of the coursework will be related to the discipline you're planning to study (in my case it was management and organizational behavior, so it would have been some psychology courses and some general management courses). The other portion of the coursework is methodological: basically, teaching you how to do research. It's a lot of statistics and econometrics.
This whole time, you have an ongoing commitment of 15-25 hours per week as a teaching assistant (TA) or research assistant (RA) for some professor(s). From the stories I've heard, what this means varies widely depeding on the university you're attending, and the professor you're assigned to. It can range from the equivalent of high school study hall, to what might best be described as indentured servanthood.
Add to all this the expectation to generate some meaningful research (probably in conjunction with a professor or two), and your weekly workload is between 65-80 hours per week. On the upside, tuition is free, and you receive a stipend (generally $20,000-30,000 per year), so unless you're married and have children, you don't have to worry about generating any additional income.
At the end of the two years you take your exams. Everyone I've ever interviewed about these exams tell me stories that cause me to think that they were devised by the demon responsible for coming up with creative punishments in Dante's third or fourth level of hell. There are hours of intense interviews by a variety of professors. They grill you on the nuances of hundreds of different research papers that you should have been exposed to by this point (that is, if you're doing the work), and you have to come up with deeply thoughtful responses that convince them that you belong in the brotherhood of those who write incessantly inscrutable literature. There's also a written portion that usually goes something like this: Friday evening you get a one page question in your email (again, relating to the nuances of one or more of the research areas that you've studied over the last two years). On Monday morning you're expected to deliver a written response to that question that is of sufficient length to make Leo Tolstoy wince, and with a sufficient number of citations to convince the reader that you actually spent 12 months preparing this paper.
Moving forward to years three through five: these are generally a little less intense in that, at this point, you're done with coursework and you've passed your qualifying exams. During these three years, you: a) continue your valuable work as a TA/RA; b) teach a few classes (something that you won't have to do as much of once you're a fully certified professor [this always struck me as really screwed up]); and c) continuing your research. The end goal here is to generate a doctoral dissertation that you'll present at the very end of your education. Additionally, you're working on a number of research projects (again, probably as an RA for a number of professors) that will, hopefully, someday (probably 3-5 years down the road) be published.
When you graduate, you (hopefully) get a job as an Assistant Professor at a business school somewhere. By this time, if you're a really good researcher, and you've developed relationships with a few really prolific professors who are doing research that is considered "cool" at the moment, you might have an article published. If you do, you're in very good shape. One way or the other, the minute you start your job as a professor, the "academic clock" starts ticking. This clock is similar to the proverbial biological clock in that if you can't get the job done before the clock winds down, the gig is up. There might be some other alternative ways to realize your dream, but they aren't going to be nearly as fulfilling as the more "natural" way, and they'll probably be quite a bit more painful.
The academic clock: it's basically this idea that, in order to keep your job, long-term, you have to gain tenure (which basically is a label that your university gives you that guarantees that you can't be fired). Obviously, the university wants to be very careful about who they guarantee can't be fired, so they set a very high bar: you must publish, publish, publish in order to gain tenure. And you only have a certain number of years to convince the powers that be at your university that you are worthy of never being fired (generally about 7 years).
So you have this clock winding down, and within that time, you have to publish some signficant number of articles, a great proportion of those being in "A" rated journals (there are only a handful of "A" rated journals, each of which is published 4-6 times per year, each issue of which contains maybe 8 articles; all told--there are probably only 150 or so articles published in "A" rated journals annually).
So what does it take to get publications in "A" rated journals? Well, first, it's important to note that if you submit an article to a journal today, you probably won't receive a response from the editor for 4-6 months. That response is statistically likely to be either an outright rejection or a "revise and resubmit" (literally NO article is accepted outright--that's not an exaggeration). These revise and resubmits go out to maybe 10-15% of the submitters, and they basically amount to the reviews of three other professors who serve as editorial reviewers for the journal. The remaining 85-90% of submissions are simply rejected.
I've received one of these "revise and resubmits". They make you cry; professors (in their reviews) are very effective at communicating how little value you bring as a researcher. But more importantly, they tell you "I would like this article better if it were to focus on these ideas/research questions". So you then spend the next 4-6 months revising the article--maybe a little longer if you need to do a little more research--with the goal of making it more interesting to the reviewers. And then you resubmit, fingers crossed that you get an acceptance a few months later. Now you're 12-16 months in; the journal will actually be printed perhaps 6-12 months down the road. So from the time you submit your article to the time it reaches production is 2-3 years. That doesn't include the time you actually spent doing the research and writing the initial paper (which, can range from a few months to a year or two, depending on how prolific you are).
Long way of saying, it's a lot of work, and quite a lot of time, to get the requisite number of "A" publications while your clock is still ticking. The best strategy to take: try to figure out what topics are currently of interest to the editors of the "A" journals, and do research that'll probably interest them. Here's the thing: academic business journal publishing is strangely incestuous; there are topics that are currently "en vogue", and topics that aren't. Whether or not a topic is "en vogue" has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not the topic has any practical import; it has everything to do with who runs the journal. So most submitters try to write articles that are of interest to the editors, and a publication invetibly ends up having a few common themes for an editor's tenure. And then other editors look to those highly rated journals, see those themes, and assume that this is the stuff "A" journals are made of, and so they begin to only accept articles that look just like those in the "A" journals. Before long, you have the academic equivalent to the entire pop-music industry recording albums full of slightly differing covers of Justin Bieber's song "Baby". All in all, a really boring world.
So what does this all mean with respect to management innovation? My view from here in the cheap seats is that the deck is stacked against you if you enter the academic system. There are a great number of incredible professors who entered business academia because they wanted to do something that would fundamentally improve management and organizations, but in order to survive in that world, you MUST conform to the system. And conforming to the system is an all-consuming prospect; you don't have a lot of time available to change the world--it's everything you can do to just stay alive.
I might be wrong, but I don't think so. I just performed a Google Scholar search for the terms "management" and "innovation". Google sent me a list of over 2.1 million unique articles--the vast majority of them academic articles of some sort. But you tell me: how many truly groundbreaking things that are going to revolutionize the way you run your business have you seen come out of academia in the last year? Or two years? Or ten? They're great people writing lots of very interesting things--but with very little likelihood of fulfilling what I believe their Mission should be: to fundamentally change the way business operates for the better.
I think it's important to point out that this has very little to do with the people; business academics, as a whole, are incredibly brilliant, creative and hardworking people who are, interestingly, very focused on trying to fundamentally improve organizations. It's a problem with the system that they're a part of. It's a broken system, and I sometimes worry that there's no real way to fix it. The system might be so pervasive that the change will be of the disruptive sort--an alternative system that ultimately displaces the one we've got.
Which, when you think about it, would make a great business school case study.
Those of you who’ve been paying any attention at all to the news lately are, I’m sure, aware that in February, 17 year-old Trayvon Martin, while walking through a Sanford, Florida community, was shot and killed by George Zimmerman the neighborhood watch captain.
Zimmerman was taken in for questioning and subsequently released after claiming that the shooting was in self-defense.
The events ignited a controversy, especially after Martin’s parents obtained copies of 911 calls made by Zimmerman on the night of the shooting. Over the subsequent 4 weeks or so, news outlets across the country picked up the story, and groups from coast to coast weighed in on the shooting. It got so heated and controversial that the police chief in Sanford, Fla. resigned amid allegations that he mishandled the events, and one radical group even offered a $10,000 bounty for the “capture of Zimmerman” who, at the time, was in hiding. Zimmerman has subsequently been arrested and charged with second-degree murder.
This is, by all accounts, a tragedy. But the responses to this tragedy have ranged from interesting to downright alarming. I read one particular story tonight that chilled me to the core.
Bill Cosby was interviewed this week on CNN’s “State of the Union”. The anchor asked him about the Trayvon Martin case. Cosby responded that the issue at hand, “is not race—it’s guns.” Cosby went on to say that, “I believe that when you tell me that you’re going to protect the neighborhood that I live in, I don’t want you to have a gun.”
I don’t want to get too off track here—this isn’t a political blog, after all. But there’s a principle here that applies universally to all societies—large societies like nations, or micro-societies like companies.
First, I think you have to accept that freedom is a profound concept; it’s the fuel of innovation and creativity, and is a vital ingredient in ensuring personal happiness. Further, I contend that, as human beings, we have a genetic thirst for freedom; so much of what we do—even in our day-to-day lives—is about ensuring our personal, enduring freedom. If you don’t believe that, then I’ve probably lost you already (although, I’d love to have a chat with you about it; drop me a note).
Assuming you’re with me so far, then allow me to describe the most paradoxical phenomenon I can imagine. We (particularly Americans—as inhabitants of a nation that was founded not only on the principles of personal liberty, but was only founded because of a deep, burning desire for personal liberty) acknowledge this desire for freedom, yet our response so often to incidents that amount to an abuse of freedom, or an irresponsible exercise of freedom, is to throw the freedom out.
Let me try to explain: back to Cosby’s remarks. The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution states, in part, that, “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Our foundational document literally guarantees that American’s shall have the perpetual right to have, and to bear, firearms. There’s been much political wrangling about this issue for many years (with many nuanced views of what our forefathers really meant when they wrote this into the constitution), but I think when you consider this writing in light of the circumstances surrounding our birth as a nation, it’s not too hard to discern our founders’ intent.
This isn’t a history lesson, but consider the following from the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,--that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…” [emphasis added]
Remember that America was only born out of a general sense that Great Britain’s policies and laws, at the time, represented oppression of the sort that robbed Colonists of the very rights that the Declaration of Independence claimed were unalienable. And the Founding Fathers felt that, as citizens who are governed by their own consent, they had the right to overthrow that government, even if by force, in the interest of affirming those inalienable rights to our citizenry.
They were already at war with Great Britain as of this writing, and they knew that their ability to alter or otherwise abolish the then-ruling government, they would have to prevail in armed combat—a reality only realizable because they, as colonists, owned arms.
I believe this is why our forefathers including the “right to keep and bear arms” in the Constitution; they recognized that America was only America because our Founding Fathers were able to take up arms against an oppressive government, and they wanted to ensure that ability for the life of our government; they not only wanted to proclaim that America was a place of Liberty, they wanted to ensure that our citizens could forever take up arms against our Government if our Government ever became, “destructive of these ends.”
All that to say this: this right to bear arms is fundamental to America; it is why we are what we are. It is one of the primary ingredients to the Liberty we count so precious. It should be unconscionable when someone, on national television, advocates for anything remotely close to eliminating the right to keep and bear arms.
But there’s this trend—in American government, but also in professionally managed organizations—to respond to abuses or freedom by stripping away freedoms. This is only one example—someone exercises their right to keep and bear arms in an irresponsible way, and immediately someone jumps up and advocates confiscation of firearms.
Let’s bring it closer to home: you catch someone using the corporate account for personal items, so you eliminate all purchasing rights, and mandate that everyone purchase through a purchasing manager, and that all purchases need three approvals. Or you find that someone was watching N’Sync videos on YouTube while at work, so you block out all access to video websites from work computers. Or you find that someone was working on a project that was a non-starter, a waste of time; so you require that everyone get written approval before spending any time on any new project.
All of these sound familiar, right? And you can probably think of dozens of similar examples: this is the stuff of the “modern organization” (and, incidentally, of a coffee-table book full of Dilbert comics). But think about it: so much of this is simply the result of a few people using freedom irresponsibly, and someone with some power reacting by stripping that freedom away from everyone.
“But,” you say, “why does it matter?” It’s possible that it doesn’t matter to anyone but me (wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been the only weirdo standing alone on the other side of the dance hall), but I don’t think that’s the case.
Here’s what I believe: I believe that Freedom matters. A lot. In fact, I think it’s one of the most important things…to everybody. Not just freedom as an abstract concept related to the laws that govern our country, but freedom as a real, practical principle that we encounter in virtually every interaction every single day. And here’s why I think it matters:
1. Freedom yields happiness. I challenge you to find me a national government that has stripped all personal, individual freedom out of the country, yet still has happy, contended citizens. Again, each of us has a burning, innate desire to be free.
2. Freedom brings prosperity. People do incredible and productive things when they are free, and those incredible, productive things yield prosperity—for them, and for those around them.
3. Freedom is efficient. Consider all those examples of organizations stripping away freedoms in the name of “reducing risk of loss”: in all cases, eliminating freedom involves introducing bureaucracy—the deadliest form of waste known to human organizations. Why the “deadliest form”? Because bureaucracy feels like the “right thing” when we are responding to some “crisis”; but it’s almost NEVER the right thing. It is almost always the death knell of the organization that introduces the evil thing.
4. Freedom fosters honesty and integrity. Freedom always brings with it a choice—and when people have a choice, when they can choose to interact with you, or to not interact with you, you have an inherent pressure to be truthful, and to live up to your commitments (the definition of integrity). In the absence of a choice—when freedom is not present—entropy often (almost always, in fact) causes you to fall out of integrity; what you deliver fails to live up to your commitment. If you don’t believe me, think about the last time you went to the Department of Motor Vehicles: there’s an implicit commitment to promptly and efficiently serve you, but can you remember a single instance where you were promptly and efficiently served? Of course you can’t. The only reason you accept that, though, is because you don’t have a choice in the matter.
So, I’ve taken a long, perhaps circuitous, route to sound an alarm: beware, business leaders, of the instinct to toss freedom out the door. Freedom is always the right answer.
As a parting note, allow me one final analogy: can you remember when you first started making money? Not the lawn-mowing or baby-sitting money you made when you were a kid; not even that first job—I mean real money. Remember those first few paychecks? You felt rich—even if it was only a few hundred dollars, it felt like unlimited money.
Most of you can also probably remember (vividly) your first major money screw-up. It was probably sometime soon after that first “real” paycheck. Maybe it was buying that brand-new car that you’ve regretted ever since; maybe it was the time-share for a “condo” in the Appalachians (turned out that “condo” was a term used VERY loosely by the marketing folks—and that the “condo” is only inhabitable during the season when the alligators are hibernating). One way or the other, we all have paid a little stupid tax.
Did you, upon realizing that you’d made a very foolish mistake with your money, immediately decry money, pull all the cash out of your bank account, and promptly start a bonfire with it? Of course not! The fact that you were foolish and irresponsible with your money doesn’t eliminate money's value, and it’s not a good reason for abstaining from money for the rest of your life!
Some people will take advantage of the freedom; others will prove irresponsible, and freedom will allow them to screw things up very quickly. But on the whole and in the long-run, Freedom is precious, and abuse by one is not a good reason for throwing Freedom away.
I published a whitepaper on this site today called, “Rudeness Really Does Matter.” It outlines and discusses research published recently in the Academy of Management Journal that indicates that rudeness causes others to be less cooperative or helpful (which isn’t all that surprising), but also (and perhaps more surprisingly) that rudeness actually tends to diminish others’ cognitive ability!
That’s right: when someone’s rude to you, it actually makes you a little dumber (at least temporarily)!
It seems to me that this is an important finding—particularly in a Self-Managed organization, where each colleague is responsible for addressing behavior that detracts from the organization’s mission. The problem is, oftentimes, the colleague that jumps out and deals with the issue (“kills the snake”) does so in a manner that’s, well, downright rude.
And now it seems that we have some support for the notion that this rudeness actually detracts from our collective effectiveness!
The whitepaper digs deeper into the research and does more to fill out the topic, so I urge you to click on the link above and read it (it’s good stuff; I promise! You won’t be sorry). But more importantly, weigh in here.
I pose a few thought questions in the whitepaper; spend a little time on them. Then jump back over to this blog post and leave a comment. What do you think? Is this meaningful research? Does it resonate with you, or is it pure balderdash?
For organizations and the people within them to become more self-managing, most organizations must change. These changes may include flattened hierarchies, distributed decision-making, empowerment programs and the like. But as noted by Blanchard researchers Pat Zigarma and Judd Hoestrka, as many as 70% of change efforts fail to achieve their purpose—an overwhelming number.
As the researchers note: "If change is mis-handled, the outcomes can be disruptive at best, and disastrous at worst. In some cases, failed change efforts will lead to even more serious trouble, as productivity, morale, and money are wasted on lost causes."* Frequently, failed change efforts are eulogized with the observation that 'people are just too lazy to change.'
A fascinating clue regarding why change is so hard can be found in a recent study cited by Fast Company’s Dan Heath.** Students have just come into a lab that smells of warm, fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies. There is a table with two bowls. One bowl contains the cookies, the other bowl contains radishes. Some students are told to eat the cookies but no radishes, some are told (cruelly) to eat the radishes but no cookies instead. When the researchers leave the room, the cookie-eaters are (unsurprisingly) not tempted to eat the radishes. More impressively, the radish-eaters refrain from eating the cookies.
The surprising part of the study occurs next. After a while, the researchers re-enter the room and have all the students work on a logic puzzle, which is unsolvable (although the students don’t know that). The cookie-eaters persist for nineteen minutes, on average, before giving up on the puzzle. The radish-eaters, interestingly, gave up after an average of only eight minutes. What accounts for the difference?
Psychologists now know that self-control is a depletable resource—it’s why people are more snappish toward others after a hard day at the office—and why the radish-eaters gave up quicker. After focusing excruciatingly on a task or problem (like an intense conversation), we just don’t have a lot of self-control left in the tank.
The effect on change? In change situations, people are called upon to substitute new ways of doing things for the old. This takes effort, concentration and focus—all of which deplete self-control. People desperately want to revert to old, familiar ways of doing things—undermining change efforts. And, all too often, we flippantly--and incorrectly--refer to people resisting change as lazy.
*100208 Leadership Strategies for Making Change Stick © 2008 The Ken Blanchard Companies
**https://www.fastcompany.com/video/why-change-is-so-hard-self-control-is-exhaustible?partner=best_of_newsletter
The Canadian Snowbirds Demonstration Team has been thrilling audiences at high-performance air shows across North America since 1978. A branch of the Canadian Air Force, one would think such a group would be rigidly hierarchical—but it’s not. It’s really quite self-managed.
One of the joys of working with the Morning Star Self-Management Institute is scouring the world for examples of self-management in action. Frequently, we find self-management in unlikely places.
One question that comes up is: how important is coordination (a.k.a. teamwork) in a self-managed environment? The answer: it's everything! A core traditional management function, coordination (or the lack thereof) among team members can make or break an organization. Self-management is unlike Peter Drucker’s famous metaphor of organization as conducted symphony. To continue with the music metaphors, it’s much more like a cluster of jazz bands roaming around Bourbon Street. The trick is not to direct them, but just to make sure that each band is relatively harmonious and doesn’t clash with all the other bands.
In an organization with multiple geographic locations, one can speculate about the myriad levels of coordination that have to occur: between locations, between functions, between businesses, and between domains like sales, strategy and human resources. Pretty complex, right? Now imagine an organization of self-managed professionals in an unlikely organization, creating scores of high-risk public performances for six months out of every year—where coordination is (and, tragically, has been) literally a matter of life or death.
A few quick facts about this Canadian icon, the Snowbirds Demonstration Team:
• The Snowbirds (431 Air Demonstration Squadron) consist of approximately 88 people based in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, consisting mostly of mechanics and support staff.
• The team includes 11 pilots, two of whom serve as ground controllers and nine of whom fly the nine Canadian-built Tutor jets.
• The air show season lasts from May through October, taking the team throughout North America.
• The jets are circa 1964, making them older than the pilots.
• The team is somewhat low-tech, moving equipment around the continent in a semi truck and trailer.
• The Snowbirds are eminently accessible: anyone can call up public affairs officer Captain Marc Velasco and seek information at any time.
• The pilots fly in tight formations at up to 600 kph/400 mph, are incredibly athletic, and pull up to 6 G’s during performances. The first female Snowbird pilot, Maryse Carmichael, is now the Commanding Officer. There have been six fatalities over the years. It’s not a job for the faint-hearted.
• There is a two-foot-square box of vertical space above and below each Snowbird jet flying in formation. Pilots cannot see above and below—they must trust their fellow pilots to avoid catastrophe.
• Snowbird jets fly horizontally about six to eight feet apart, wingtip to wingtip. This may seem like plenty of room, but not when they’re flying at four hundred miles per hour.
• Pilots debrief after each show and each practice. There is a lead pilot in the #1 plane, referred to as the “Boss.” The Boss is not called the Boss because he or she gets to boss everyone else around. The title carries with it enhanced decision rights and responsibilities, accepted by everyone (i.e. whether to fly in particular weather conditions, etc.). Even a flock of geese flying in formation needs a lead bird to follow. That is one function of the Boss—to be the #1 lead bird.
• The team engages in six months of intensive preparation, and includes more than fifty different formations and maneuvers.
• Finding new recruits is not a problem: being a Snowbird pilot is considered one of the most prestigious jobs in the Canadian Air Force. Making the final selection cutdown is challenging, especially since there are so many talented pilots available.
• Turnover is deliberate: the Snowbirds intentionally replace one-third of their nine pilots every year (how would that work in most organizations?).
Some critical success factors emerge from the Snowbirds preparation and execution:
• There is an extremely high sense of mission focus. The Snowbirds represent not only the Canadian Armed Forces, but the entire nation. As ambassadors for their country, they carry a sharp sense of responsibility to achieve excellence in every performance.
• The pilots engage in highly effective time-compressed group visualization before every practice and performance. The exercise allows them to imprint a vision of a perfect performance in their brains before executing it in real time—leading to continuous improvement.
• Hierarchy melts on the road, since the Snowbird pilots live out of suitcases in hotels across North America for six months out of the year. Yes, there are different military ranks among the pilots. They become like a family, however, developing trust and camaraderie.
• Trust is paramount: since pilots can’t see directly above or below their own planes, there is simply no way to perform without trust.
• Feedback is a constant—visual, cockpit instruments, voice communication, etc. And every practice and performance is videotaped and debriefed. The Snowbirds are committed to a relentless pursuit of perfection. They engage in unemotional, unvarnished critiques of themselves and each other—again contributing to continuous improvement.
• The particular role played by each Snowbird pilot (i.e., piloting the #7 plane, for example) is conducted for each show according to a specific written plan for that show. If a pilot has to break off a formation to avoid a flock of birds, for example, it’s referred to as a “missed contract.” Each pilot has an overall mission (i.e., be the #7 pilot), and a mission for a particular practice or performance (i.e., perform X maneuvers in Y formations). And all guided by an oath to the Canadian Armed Forces and the nation. Before a pilot takes off for a performance, it’s pretty clear what his or her job is at that moment.
The Snowbirds perform at San Francisco’s Fleet Week on Saturday and Sunday, October 8 and 9, 2011 https://www.fleetweek.us/index.html.
Check out this video and turn on the sound for a preview of what to expect when self-managed professionals coordinate like their lives depend on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFl_6O5hFSQ&feature=player_embedded.