True autonomy doesn't exist

We love the idea of autonomy. It's a natural extension to the right of self-determination. But in my experience what we often fail to understand is that it has limits. As an individual in a western society, you have a right of self-determination. That right ends when your decisions & actions impact other individuals. The same goes for an autonomous organization. As the famous poet John Donne stated "No man is an island".

In today's working culture we admire organizations and ways of working which rely on autonomy. Whether it's autonomous teams or individuals we are infatuated with the idea. This is why we also forget to check the flip-side of the coin when setting up this type of working environment. Without built-in transparency and dependency management chaos will be inevitable.

Why is that? Because like it or not, you're always a part of a larger system. And if you stop and think, it's really hard to come up with an example where this isn't true. Even if you're a self-entrepreneur - the epitome of autonomous working unit - you aren't truly autonomous. First and foremost you are constantly impacted by your customers. Secondly there's the small entity called government and their laws & regulations.

Because like it or not, you're always a part of a larger system.

This means that no matter what, you can't make decisions in a vacuum. You will always have to balance the optimization for yourself and the optimization of the whole system. This will mean compromises. Sometimes this means making adjustments that feel sub-optimal to you, in order to make the whole more optimal. In order for this to work, you first have to understand the system you are a part of. A good example is transparency. It might require extra work that doesn't directly benefit the team, but will undoubtedly provide benefit for the stakeholders.

Self-governance is not the same as being relieved of responsibility and accountability, quite the opposite. If you're in an autonomous team that's part of an organization, your team is accountable to that organization. It is also your teams responsibility to operate in such a way that you don't hinder any other teams' autonomy. Your team needs to be constantly fully aware of its role and responsibilities. And beyond that, the team must have a clear understanding of the paradigm it's operating under.