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.
