Autonomy is a critical differentiator in any knowledge-based enterprise.

I post about three general areas that I am passionate about:

• Systems engineering as it applies to organization design.
• Excellence in software engineering practices.
• Delivering great product to meet the user's and business's needs.

This post is mostly about organization design, flavored a little with the demands of a software business.

Successful organizations are built around some deliberately chosen balance between staff autonomy and rigorous processes. If your business is a Mcdonald's restaurant, you will heavily depend on established processes. You train your staff on these processs, anu depend on them to execute them reliably and consistently. When the demands of your business change, you create new processes and you retrain your staff.

If your business is a knowledge-based business, your customers expect your staff to be responsive to their unique needs. No amount of process or policy can anticipate all of the complexity that your staff will face serving your customers. In this environment, it is necessary to lean more towards the autonomy end of that spectrum. Failing to do so will result in a business that is fragile, frustrating and inefficient. Ours staff need to be comfortable operating with a little more autonomy and we as a business need to be comfortable granting that autonomy and that trust.

I would encourage you to think about this when you find that your staff are asking for a process or a policy to cover a particular area of your business. It may not always be in the best interest of the business to cover every single area or eventuality with a comprehensive policy. Instead, you might think about providing very high-level guidance. and rely on staff autonomy and intuition to fill the gaps..