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CHAPTER 2: TRAITS, BEHAVIORS, AND RELATIONSHIPS 45

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Stephen McDonnell, Applegate Farms
IN THE LEAD For most of Applegate Farms’ history, its CEO hasn’t even been in the offi ce. When

Stephen McDonnell bought a struggling meat products company (then called

Jugtown Mountain Smokehouse) nearly 20 years ago, he spent the first six months
working full-time on-site, but since then he’s been working mostly from home.
From his experience at other companies, McDonnell had observed that most
organizational problems were more easily diagnosed, and more effectively solved,
within specific teams or work groups rather than by top managers. He decided that

the best way to get a company running smoothly was to give everyone constant
access to relevant information, empower them with the freedom and responsibility
to act on it, and then stay out of the way.
What’s most interesting about the whole story is that McDonnell is a self-
confessed control-freak boss, full of anxiety and obsessed with meeting goals and
moving on quickly. He realized that working mostly from home was the best way
to protect the company from his tendency to micromanage. McDonnell goes into
the offi ce only on Wednesdays, when he does everything from taste-test new
products, observe twice-a-day team “huddles” (10-minute stand-up meetings to
discuss key problems or issues), meet with senior staff members to discuss stra-
tegic issues, and deal with any staff problems that might threaten the company’s
smooth functioning.
Applegate is thriving under this system of extreme democratic leadership. The

company has grown to sales of more than $35 million. Profits and productivity go
up every year. To McDonnell, a hands-off leadership style “doesn’t mean they don’t
need you—it means they need you looking ahead.”
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The findings about autocratic and democratic leadership in the original Uni-
versity of Iowa studies indicated that leadership behavior had a definite effect on

outcomes such as follower performance and satisfaction. Equally important was

the recognition that effective leadership was reflected in behavior, not simply by
what personality traits a leader possessed. The Stephen McDonnell example above