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In 1984, Joe Mansueto was considered a maverick for pursuing his idea of providing detailed financial information directly to investors. Today, he’s chairman and CEO of a rapidly growing company with nearly $180 million in 2004 annual revenues poised to go public. Yet Mansueto, AB ’78, MBA ’80, still aims to keep the entrepreneurial spirit alive at Morningstar.
To maintain the nimbleness that first made Morningstar successful, the company operates with a decentralized structure in which six units operate as if independent small businesses within the larger organization. That’s how we run the business, chopping it up into little businesses, Mansueto said at the April 12 Chicago GSB Club Leadership Series presentation.
Another way to keep a strong culture of entrepreneurship is to grow the company’s workforce organically, promoting people with a real drive, who care more about getting the job done than the niceties of corporate behavior, he said. We often say a violently executed plan today is better than a perfectly executed plan two weeks from now.
Mansueto and Morningstar must meet the challenge of continuing to cultivate an entrepreneurial energy in an industry that has changed dramatically over the past two decades. The barriers to entry are lower now with the Internet making distribution easier and computing power so much cheaper. This makes it more difficult for companies to own content, set themselves apart and meet customer’s higher standards, he said. Customers expect extremely timely data, extremely accurate data and the presentation’s got to be great. People cut you a lot more slack 20 years ago. We look at our publications back when we started, we cringe today when we look at those things.
Jenn Goddu