About Redshift3
Doug Kirkpatrick’s first exposure to the limits of organizational freedom came on the first day of first grade, when his teacher asked the class to color an outline drawing of a buffalo in brown. Doug, knowing that a buffalo has a variegated coat, insisted on coloring his buffalo half brown and half black, barely earning a “C” for his inaugural assignment. In the ensuing years, he developed a keen interest in the relationship of individuals to organizations in matters of freedom, structure, feedback, creativity and excellence.
After picking up degrees in economics and law while working long hours selling groceries, paint and shoes, wrangling little kids in a day care center, building campgrounds, and making small loans, Doug began working as a financial controller in the food manufacturing industry with California entrepreneur extraordinaire Chris J. Rufer, founder of The Morning Star Company.
Morning Star started construction of a new food processing facility in late 1989, fueled by Mr. Rufer's forward-thinking production methods and organizational innovations. In the spring of 1990, the twenty-four original colleagues of the company met one evening in a dusty construction trailer to adopt an organizational philosophy for the new company. There would be two basic governing principles. One, no one would have any unilateral authority over any other person, and two, colleagues would be expected to keep their commitments to each other and the mission. There would, therefore, be no human bosses—the only boss would be the mission. There would be no titles—everyone would be a colleague in a totally flat organization. And there would be high expectations for team members, including the obligation to hold each other accountable.
That summer, fueled by esprit de corps and passion, Morning Star began a successful production run, making over ninety million pounds of aseptic tomato paste to feed world demand of some of the world’s greatest companies (Kraft, Heinz, Campbell’s) in order to produce sauce (pizza, spaghetti, taco, barbecue, steak), soup, ketchup, salad dressing, and a myriad of other products. Now the world’s largest tomato processor, Morning Star relies on its unique self-management philosophy to transcend tough competition and fluidly adapt to the demands of its stakeholders. As such, it serves as a uniquely instructive laboratory to study organizational dynamics.
With that background, Doug began full-time coaching and consulting in 2002, operating today under the rubric Redshift3*, and drawing on the expertise of an international network of friends, colleagues, coaches and consultants to access multiple business disciplines to create freedom-based solutions for clients. He believes that it is strikingly presumptuous for leaders and managers to think that they can motivate people using carrots and sticks, believing instead that the critical task is to create conditions where individuals in organizations motivate themselves--and thrive.
He is the author of the new book on self-management Beyond Empowerment: The Age of the Self-Managed Organization, now available on Amazon.com at http://amzn.to/nznCAz.
His passion is for the following three drivers of excellence:
1. Coaching individuals to recognize and exercise the power they already have to navigate and excel in their work environments.
2. Consulting with organizations to create conditions where people can self-motivate and self-manage.
3. Collaboratory—creating powerful business simulation environments for learning about self-organization and natural leadership.
Doug studied leadership coaching under William Bergquist, Ph.D., author of Executive Coaching (Pacific Soundings Press, 1999), and delivers executive education in topics ranging from advanced Business Process Management (BPM) to Self-Management.**
Doug’s presentation to the Global Business Process Forum in London in May 2003, entitled Running an Organization Without Management, was voted the most interesting and insightful (PDF) case study. He is a former public official (Workforce Investment Board, Merced County, California), a director on several public and private boards, dual citizen (Canada and the U.S.), and enthusiastic traveler to all hemispheres.
*Redshift: 1. the systematic increase in the wavelength of all light received from a celestial object. 2. A metaphor for increasing the quantum of freedom available for individuals in an organization to pursue excellence.
**Content options include the full range of available training, facilitation and materials from Development Dimensions International (DDI), Personal Strengths Publishing (SDI), Luminance, NetTPS, Pfeiffer-Wiley, Capsim and many others.