When does work-life balance not feel like an act? When you take away the scale.
I would probably have gotten fired for the looseness in which I took my implied responsibility as a manager to count hours and monitor individual work processes. Some would have seen it as criminal that I didn’t ensure 40+ hours every week for each of my employees. Some would have called it wasteful that office spaces and cubicles sat barren. Accused me of neglect because I didn’t know the whereabouts of everyone placed under my supervision from 8-5 every Monday through Friday. They would have spoken of my weakness around the water cooler because I would not bat an eye when interacting with my team member while they were at the grocery in the middle of the day. Surely, they would have questioned why I was not more demanding of my people.
Had any of those things actually happened, I would have responded the same in each situation. My answer would have been because when your team is exceeding all expectations of them and outperforming their peer group, why would I attempt to fix what wasn’t broken.
I mean, is it thievery when a single team of just over a dozen employees achieves the following in a single year?
Builds an entire platform leveraged by 270k people daily
Released four additional apps that are used by thousands each month
Saved the firm $900k ($400k reoccurring)
Increased productivity of others by greater than 10x
Improved the experience of our customers by as much as 40%
Am I creating the wrong culture and applying inappropriate expectations when weekend work is needed, and 100% voluntarily show up, without grumbling?
It doesn’t sound like anyone got robbed to me; it sounds like we more than justified our existence by creating tremendous value and delivering measurable impact.
Maybe the naysayers should not be asking what should I stop doing as a leader and instead ask themselves what can we learn so our teams can produce the impact that they are.
Keys to Successful Autonomy
All of this is possible for any team. Any leader can operate successfully in a state of controlled chaos. Here is the MATCH that ignites the fires of autonomy in work environments.
Maturity- Managers have to mature in their definition of the role of managing. If you believe your job is to observe things getting done, then you are not mature enough to lead an autonomous team. You can’t successfully observe that which you don’t see. But if you believe it is your job to set direction, define success, and then ensure direction and success are achieved (while developing your team), autonomy will work for you. You must also mature your approaches to communication, validating progress, and coaching, all of which are possible. It comes down to do you want to continue to leverage outdated managerial expectations that permeated the workplace in the 20th century and even into the first decade of the 21st, or are you ready to embrace the changes necessary to succeed in the new economy.
The people doing the work must be mature enough to work without formalized restraints. It comes down to, do you as an employee want to default to the behaviors that have led decades of managers to believe they need to monitor your actions and keep your time, or do you want to demonstrate behaviors like active participation in meetings (virtual or otherwise), delivering impact (not just work products), and proactively communicating that scream I can be counted on to succeed on my own terms.
Focus on communication: Maturing your understanding of communication is HUGE. Just because you are working autonomously does not change that you are part of a team. That means that the work you are doing still impacts the work someone else is doing or waiting to do. And because you are likely working outside of eyeshot of the other people who need your work to do their work, the importance of communication of status and completion goes way up. Why, because others can’t visually see that the work is completed and know to start their part. The reason this is a matter of maturity is that immature employees think communication of status is about the manager not trusting or believing the employee is making progress; it is a micromanagement tactic. The reality is that communicating status is about improving productivity and being a good teammate. The Manager-Tools folks have this great concept that work isn’t done until the completion has been reported. That is always true but more critical in work arrangements where people are working when and where they choose. Be a good teammate and communicate status and completion.
This transition to autonomy for employees is challenging. At first, people will either run amuck or be paralyzed by the freedom. For those who are paralyzed, consistent reinforcement of your expectations in the autonomous environment is crucial. For those who run amuck, all you need is to fill your environment with…
Accountability - Even in a world without boundaries, people will push them. When someone crosses a line, the manager must respond swiftly and consistently with feedback and reinforcement of expectations through effective communication. Autonomy is not permission to miss communicated deadlines, deliver a poop sandwich as an outcome, or fail to live up to agreed-upon expectations. It is permission to achieve the communicated definition of success when, where, and how the employee chooses. That is the heart of autonomy; the employee gets to work towards the agreed-upon output when, where, and how they choose. Autonomy is not about operating without expectations.
Experience has shown that when performance is suffering, it’s usually because expectations were not clear. It’s rarely because of when or where the work is getting done. These factors become convenient scapegoats for why results aren’t being achieved in an autonomous environment. When in reality, it’s more likely a matter of...
Trust- Managers have to be able to let go and believe that success can be achieved without them watching it happen. You must trust that most people desire to do a good job and won’t purposefully miss an expectation that is clearly stated.
The employee has to believe that autonomy isn’t a trick. The most prominent sign you as a manager are tricking your employees is when you say “autonomy in the kingdom,” but then when you send an email that isn’t immediately responded to, you send an instant message, then a text, then a phone call all in under 30 mins. And if none of that works, you passive-aggressively ask a peer where the person is.
Look at this example. Emergencies are real, but have you clearly defined what an emergency is? Have you communicated that definition to others? Have you as the leader, set the expectation of how the team is expected to act in the case of an emergency? This is just one example of why as a leader you might be struggling with leading through autonomy. But there are many examples of the breakdown that occurs in and out of office when there is a lack of...
Clarity- Providing clear direction on priorities, assignments, requirements, and what success looks like is a must (also defining what an emergency is). If the word MATCH started with the letter “C” it would have been too perfect. Because this is truly the most critical consistent behavior of successfully autonomous teams. On those teams, we all know what is important, why it’s important, what success looks like, and when success needs to be achieved by (deadlines). And that clarity begins with the leader.
We ensure clarity by meeting weekly 1 on 1 to remain on the same page (and talk development) and monthly as a team to calibrate together. I communicate priorities, assignments, and deadlines up the leadership chain, to stakeholders, and to my peers. Everyone is on the same page about what is getting done and when it will be done. We all have extreme clarity, so we are free to allow for…
Humanity- Autonomy at its heart is about respecting employees as whole people. The old operating model of employees leave home at the office door and leave work in the office no longer works (even without talking about how technology blurs the lines) and frankly never did. So few people can bifurcate their lives into home and work. Why because it creates tremendous discomfort and pain to pretend to have separate beings. We bought into a convenient lie that the discomfort and pain was an employee’s lack of ability to be tough or a sign of their personal weakness. How stupid were we to believe the lie? The only people who profit when people try to bifurcate themselves is the drug companies (pharmaceutical, alcohol, and illegal) The only way you can bifurcate yourself is to consciously push aspects of your life into your subconscious. Just ask Freud how well that works out for people.
If you value the person for more than the work you get out of them seeing them as a person is much easier (another example of maturity). Ask yourself this question to gauge your level of viewing people as… people, if I was the one who <fill in personal situation your employee is going through> how would I want to be accommodated/treated. Then treat people that way. If your responses are harsh or start with, I would never find myself in that poison because I… get out of leadership now.
Additionally finding ways to infuse fun and connection so the team still feels engaged in meaningful relationships around work is also a necessary part of successfully meeting the human needs of autonomous teams. People want to be left to work on their own terms, but very few really want to be left completely alone.
One more thing
If you light the MATCH and purposefully work to keep the fire lit then you are off to a great start, but there is one more necessity for a successfully autonomous team.
Technology – Making sure your team has access to tools and resources is a must to enable autonomy. Trying to work in the office when your technology doesn’t work is frustrating, trying to work in isolation when your equipment fails just leads to elevated frustration. It also kills productivity and that creates another scapegoat for why autonomy doesn’t work. See I told you people will not be as productive without being under the thumb. Wrong see people won’t be as productive when they lose two hours a day connecting and reconnecting their computers.
Conclusion
A successful autonomous work arrangement is possible, but it requires
maturity on the part of the leader and the team members
accountability that is built into the system and mercilessly enforced
trust you know it when you have it and are suffocated by its absence when you don’t
clarity around mission, goals, success, and deadlines. This clarity must be communicated effectively and repeatedly
humanity as a focus, seeing the value in the entire person not just the worker
technology that consistently works and enables productivity
Like any change, it will be uncomfortable but experience has shown the discomfort is worth the payoff and the results speak for themselves.
Disclaimer(s)
Pharmaceutical drugs serve their purpose and many people suffer from physical ailments. These people benefit from the scientific and medical breakthroughs of prescription drugs. Don’t mishear that point.
Autonomy works but isn’t applicable to all types of work. Jobs that require attendance at specific periods for legitimate business reasons exist and are important. We would notice if they didn’t exist. Jobs like customer facing roles, physical labor, emergency responders. But even in these jobs it is important to find ways to create autonomy somehow But that is a different article for another day.