The Making of an Inc. 500 CEO: My Favorite Job

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As Morningstar has grown, Mansueto's focus has shifted. "One of the pleasures of my work is reinventing my role continuously," he says. "In the beginning I was very enmeshed in operations, which you need to be. And then, as we grew, I would hire people, until eventually all the pieces were delegated to other people, who can do them far better than I can. That took a good five years, to get to the point where I thought, 'I can't be worried about getting the publication out. Somebody's got to be looking out for the greater good of Morningstar.'

"Today I feel like there are four things that are my key responsibilities. One is setting the strategy for the company -- trying to figure out what Morningstar should look like, what products we should be offering, how we fit into the competitive landscape. Two is allocating capital and making sure that those capital-allocation decisions go about supporting that strategy. Three is making sure that we're attracting and retaining the best possible people. That's so key, it's something I'm going to be spending even more time on. And then four is making sure this is an environment where people can flourish, where they can succeed, and that allows for the creation of great products."

A lot of people who work at Morningstar think it's significant that Mansueto chose not to name the company after himself. They say it's symbolic of the company culture. "I'm always amazed by how hands-off he is," says Liz Michaels, Morningstar's chief operating officer. "Some-times it's a little unnerving." Rekenthaler concurs: "In the six and a half years I've been here, he has never told me what to do on anything." Adds Gillis, "What I like best about Joe is he leaves me alone." It took Rika Yoshida, a Morningstar editor, one week on the job before she figured out Mansueto was president -- and he had interviewed her. "The man has no ego," says Phillips, "no ego whatsoever."

But it's ironic that Mansueto would hide himself so, when the company is so plainly an expression of his will, his preferences, his personality. The obvious way to get ahead at Morningstar is to have attended the University of Chicago and studied something with no relevance to business. Phillips earned his master's degree from Chicago before he got sidetracked. Rekenthaler completed the course work for his master's at Chicago, in English, but never finished his thesis. Yoshida studied anthropology at Chicago; Gillis, history; Michaels, an anomaly, economics. Indeed, the only members of Mansueto's executive committee, known as the strategy committee, who don't get the Chicago alumni magazine at home are Sutton, the CFO (University of Illinois); Kurt Herrmann, the marketing man (Northwestern); and Julia Katz, head of human resources (Northwestern). Visitors to Morningstar are often struck by how quiet the place is, how absorbed in their work everybody seems to be, how you don't meet many backslappers and hand-squeezers around the office. ("Bookish, shy, self-deprecating" is how Phillips describes the workforce. "You've got a lot of people here who didn't set out to have a career in business," he says.) That's not surprising. It's the same quality of place Mansueto observed on his first visit to the Chicago campus and found so appealing: "A little more focus on pure learning, less on all the rigmarole."

And if Morningstar is a close, flexible, democratic community, it's because that's the kind of place Mansueto wants it to be. The only people who have offices with ceilings and doors are the office manager and two managers in human resources. Everybody else has a cubicle (the higher-ups, like Mansueto, have corner cubes, but a cube is a cube). Dress is casual -- there are lots of bare legs (men's and women's) and Birkenstocks during the summer. Facial hair is OK. Benefits are generous: stock options for everyone who has been there two years, eight weeks' paid family leave, six weeks' paid sabbatical every four years, and $1,500 for unrestricted tuition reimbursement every year, not to mention free apples and oranges every day in the lunchroom and free bagels on Wednesdays.

Vacations, sick days, work schedules -- those are fuzzy issues at Morningstar. "Rather than having an elaborate scheme of expected work hours, maximum time off and so forth," it says under "Time Off" in the Employee Handbook, "we prefer to give people the freedom to decide what is appropriate in their particular circumstance."

Yes, well. Of course, what happens when you have a policy like that is most people end up working more than they would otherwise, not less, especially when the boss never seems to take a vacation. That may be why last Christmas everybody in the office chipped in to buy Mansueto a week at Vic Braden Tennis College, in San Diego, for several thousand dollars. They stole his date book, found an empty week, and wrote Vic Braden in. "We had to," says Sutton. "He's one of those people who wouldn't do it for himself. That's what makes him so likable."

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