Morning Star
A tomato processor with no managers, run on written peer commitments.
Gary Hamel, First, Let's Fire All the Managers, Harvard Business Review
December 2011
Corporate Rebels coverage of Morning Star
advocacy-leaning
Chris Rufer founded Morning Star in 1970. It became the largest tomato processor in the United States and runs with no managers. Every colleague writes a Colleague Letter of Understanding, a personal mission plus negotiated commitments with the people up and down stream. Gary Hamel counted roughly 3,000 of these formal relationships in his December 2011 Harvard Business Review account.
It is the anchor for the Commitment Web, a candidate shape on the patterns page. The honest caveat comes from inside: a co-founder has estimated that about half of experienced hires leave within two years, because the negotiating load is the job. Corporate Rebels coverage is advocacy-leaning and is marked as such.
What synchronizes the work when there is no room and half the team is not a person?
What is the smallest unit that can own a customer outcome end to end?
What orients a person and an agent when neither can see the whole system?