More about autonomy…
Last month, I wrote about autonomy being the number one characteristic of any employee and that the boss should be able to expect his/her staffs to produce satisfactory work all the time as long as they are clear about the objectives. Some people commented back saying that while autonomy is a good thing, such expectation from the boss is unrealistic and the boss should not rely on his staffs’ work product without examining it thoroughly him/herself. And I did express my disagreement in my responses since it is my belief that any project in which the boss cannot expect his staffs to be autonomous, and anybody can assume that s/he can product any mediocre pile of work and there will always be some other people (e.g. the boss) to review his/her works and spot out the problems for him/her then that project is already destined to be doomed. And while I still hold my position on that matter, I realize that I missed one key variable to make my point better argued: competence.
As a matter of fact, autonomy can only be expected from people who you are sure about their ability in accomplishing the project assignments. The key thing is before being able to enjoy the satisfaction of effective delegation, the boss must staff into his/her team highly competent people, those that s/he does not need to micromanage or spend a whole lot of time checking the details of the progress or outcome. Playing the autonomy game with mediocre staffs will only result in failure. (A team with mediocre staffs may be able to succeed [in term of not failing] if being properly managed [and blessed enough], but if autonomy is the expectation in such project, it will surely be doomed.) On the other hand, not encouraging autonomy from competent staffs will limit room for innovation and creativity while causing overlapping efforts from those who are involved.
Upon my second read of Peopleware, I noticed Tom DeMarco told a very interesting story which is somewhat similar to the story I experienced and told in the original post about autonomy
One of my first bosses was Jerry Wiener, who had run a development team for General Electric on the Dartmouth time-sharing project. He later formed a small high-technology company. At the time I came along, the company was about to enter into a contract that was larger than anything it had ever done before. The entire staff was assembled as our corporate lawyer handed Jerry the contract and told him to read it and sign on the last page. “I don’t read contracts,” Jerry said, and started to sign. “Oh, wait a minute,” said the lawyer, “let me go over it one more time.”
The lawyer, just like the analyst in my story, expected that the boss would check the result for him and forgot that it was their job to produce satisfactory results. And Tom’s conclusion that “a person you can’t trust with any autonomy is of no use to you.” is the exact same thing I want to say in both blog entries about this topic of autonomy.
Time to throw out the rules of thumb:
- Staff only the most competent people into your team - those that you can completely rely upon and do not have to micromanage.
- Set clear objectives about any assignment, coach/train, and encourage them to be autonomous all the time.
- Sit back and wait for the fruit. If step 1 and 2 were done right, the fruit would most likely be satisfactory.
Good post. You should take a look into what is called “psychological contract” (several researches have been done in last decade.) That’s the thing that makes “autonomy” work. “Trust” is definitely an important ingredient. Trust can only be built over an certain period of time until outcomes of one person is predictable to the other. Ideal scenario: competent employee will act as a black box, manager can describe what he needs on the output side, the person will figure out what on the input side he needs and he figures out how to get from input to output. The autonomy is right there
Thanks, Duy. You make a good point that trust can only be established once the credibility and predictability of one person becomes obvious to another. And the black-box example is exactly what autonomy is about. I’ll definitely take a look at the concept of psychological contract.