I think that in an ideal organization, staff autonomy is conditioned on the risks and rewards of staff-initiated contributions to the business.
High autonomy is higher variance. Some of that may be good - innovation. Some of that may be bad - customer or market failures. The outcomes are money consequences to a business, and given business has some to downside tolerance to that. In some businesses tech innovations have huge realizable upside.
Maybe a way to see the autonmy tradeofff is in terms of manufacturing complexity. A business whose products reach customers via endpoints on hosted service is different than one whose products are tractors off an assembly line. Maybe that's understood as how capital-intensive it is to bring a marginal capability to market.
I'll say further than in an ideal organization, with respect to autonomy, the job of management is allocating attention and distributing context, and that management and staff alike are serving a well articulated mission through the vehicle of the business organization. In a given instance, we all can take a compass reading on "true north" for business.
A non ideal business, for starters, has a self serving and self interested control structure that views autonomy in relation to power.
Both SV and traditional companies can be ideal or not. I think the difference comes down a culture of thinking about risk - reward, and the collective, cultural engagement with mission.
High autonomy is higher variance. Some of that may be good - innovation. Some of that may be bad - customer or market failures. The outcomes are money consequences to a business, and given business has some to downside tolerance to that. In some businesses tech innovations have huge realizable upside.
Maybe a way to see the autonmy tradeofff is in terms of manufacturing complexity. A business whose products reach customers via endpoints on hosted service is different than one whose products are tractors off an assembly line. Maybe that's understood as how capital-intensive it is to bring a marginal capability to market.
I'll say further than in an ideal organization, with respect to autonomy, the job of management is allocating attention and distributing context, and that management and staff alike are serving a well articulated mission through the vehicle of the business organization. In a given instance, we all can take a compass reading on "true north" for business.
A non ideal business, for starters, has a self serving and self interested control structure that views autonomy in relation to power.
Both SV and traditional companies can be ideal or not. I think the difference comes down a culture of thinking about risk - reward, and the collective, cultural engagement with mission.