Chapter 4 – Autonomy
• Old fashioned ideas of management are giving
way to a newfangled emphasis on self-direction
according to Pink.
• Management is shifting from walking around
and watching workers to self-direction – give
them a task and get out of the way.
Autonomy, cont.
• ROWE – Results Only Work Environment
• Concept created by Cali Ressler and Jody
Thompson
– Principle – “They just have to get the work done.”
• How they do it?
• When they do it?
• Where they do it?
Is up to the individual
Autonomy, cont.
• Management is checking up on people
• Autonomy is about “creating conditions for
people to do their best work.”
• Jeff Gunther decided to implement the ROWE
concept to his own business.
– At first, people came to work at the normal time
and continued business as usual, but as more
people began to embrace the concept of when,
where and how to complete their tasks –
it caught on and was successful.
Autonomy, cont.
• Results that Gunther saw in his business.
– 1. Productivity Rose
– 2. Stress Declined
• Gunther said that people outside of his business
thought he was crazy. But he couldn’t help but see
his business becoming more successful.
– Why? “They were focused on the work itself rather
than on whether someone would call them a slacker for
leaving at three pm to watch a daughter’s soccer game.”
Autonomy, cont.
• Why was this important for Gunther? His
business designed software and he needed his
designers to be creative – in other words – they
were being creative and successful and not thinking
about the little stuff.
• Logistics – Under the ROWE concept, certain
goals had to be met. As long as the goals were set
at an appropriate level and people were meeting
their goals – then it works.
Autonomy, cont.
• Gunther also realized that if his employees
basic needs were being met – non-monetary
awards worked great (flexible hours, etc.)
• He found that people opted to stay with him
because they felt that the freedom they have to
do great work was more valuable than $10,000
more pay.
Autonomy, cont.
• Management is past its prime. Consider this as an
example: what is in your office that was there in
the 19th century?
• Is the idea of management outdated?
• Do we need to move toward autonomy?
• Deci and Ryan state that autonomy is a basic
human need – “acting with choice”
• According to D & R, “Autonomy is something that
people seek and that improves their lives.”
Autonomy, cont.
• Benefits of autonomy (Autonomous
Motivation)
– Promotes greater conceptual understanding
– Better grades
– Enhanced persistence at school and in sporting
events
– Higher productivity
– Less burn out
– Greater levels of psychological well being.
Autonomy, cont.
• Autonomy applied to business
– Businesses that offered autonomy grew at four
times the rate of the control-oriented firms and had
1/3 the turnover
• Autonomy applied to school
– The Flipped Classroom?????
Autonomy
The Four Essentials
Atlassian
• Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes
• 2002
• FedEx Days
• Evolved from permission to be off task to
requirement to be off task
Lesson Learned
• “If you don’t pay enough, you can lose people.
But beyond that, money is not a motivator.
What matters are these other features.”
--Mike Cannon-Brookes
• Features?
Autonomy(4)
• What people do
• Task
• When they do it
• Time
• How they do it
• Technique
• Whom they do it with
• Team
Autonomy over Task
• William McKnight and 3M
– “Hire good people and leave them alone”
• Growth in this area
– Hired a dream team of innovators
– Pulled one of them off of what would eventually be Scotch
Tape
– Encouraged “experimental doodling”
– 15% time yields post-it notes
Autonomy over Task
• “Google it”
– Adopted 20% time
•
•
•
•
•
•
Google News
Gmail
Orkut
Google Talk
Google Sky
Google Translate
Autonomy over Time
• Billable Hours
– Examples
• Lawyers
• Auto Body Repair
• Insurance
– Has a place with routine tasks
• You should be able to assemble this many widgets in
this amount of time by following these steps
• Be careful…there may be a more efficient way (we will discuss
during the section on technique)
Autonomy over Time
• ROWE, ROWE, ROWE your boat
–R-Results
O-Only
–W-Work
–E-Environment
Autonomy over Time
• Examples
– Best Buy Corporate
• Had a reputation for grueling hours and nit-picky
bosses
• Abandoned schedule and went totally ROWE(G)
• Currently one of the last remaining nationwide
consumer electronics store surviving
• Salaried employees get their job done…period
• Hourly employees work the allotted amount of hours
but have flexibility with the when
Autonomy over Time
• Examples—continued
– Netflix vacation policy
• Take off when you want as long as your work is covered
– Ahmed Ahmed
– Adam Emerson
Autonomy over Technique
• Zappo’s Customer Service
– Serve the customer
– No scripts
– No monitoring
– No time restraints
Autonomy over Technique
• Homeshoring
– Route calls to the home
– Provides freedom to be you
– Makes sense economically for employer and
employee
• Wristbands
Autonomy over Team
• Most difficult of the four to influence
• When the other three are in place, it creates a
great segue to this area of autonomy
Autonomy over Team
• Examples
– Whole Foods
• Department hires
– W.L. Gore
• Assemble your team and go with it
– Facebook
• Boot camp rotation then you choose
The Art of Autonomy
• Autonomy is not the absence of accountability
• People will attach differently to each
component of autonomy
• Must scaffold this concept into an
organization’s life.