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The above is a quote from a fantastic article written by Tim Kreider for the New York Times Opinion Pages, aptly titled ‘The ‘Busy’ Trap’.

It’s very true that in today’s world, nothing ever seems to stop – and that goes for the things going on around us as well as ourselves. Our growing culture of constant connectivity may be good for accelerating the spread of news and information, as well as helping the rapid growth of business, but what about the effect on our minds and functioning as humans?

We need to have time off from the constant buzz to ‘recharge’ – this is definitely the case if we are wanting to sustain high productivity at work, as we know that the more continuously we work, the less productive we become.

But stepping away from work and taking breaks isn’t only important for maintaining productivity, it is necessary for our capacity to be creative, as well as our well-being. As Tim says:

Take a break for a few minutes – read the full article here.

She goes on to discuss the ‘six principles of self-direction’ in detail, and shows why they are important for fostering engagement, and therefore improving business performance.

1. Know Yourself

Self-awareness, Sharlyn says, is the first step to successful self-direction. Each person should know their own strengths and weaknesses, as well as the ways of working that make them the most productive. It’s also important to get feedback from co-workers and team mates on how they perceive you, as it will improve your self-awareness and can have a great impact on your working relationships.

2. Do Meaningful Work

For employees to be fully engaged, it is ideal if they can establish a connection between themselves and their work through doing a job that they see as meaningful and significant. There are a few ways in which to ‘create meaning’ in one’s work – building relationships is just one example.

3. Be Part of the Solution

Employees want to feel that they are contributing to the overall picture in a significant way, by successfully solving problems and not simply redirecting the problem to an ‘external expert’ or boss. From a company perspective, it’s important to give employees training and access to resources that will allow them to be successful ‘experts’ and problem solvers in a self-directed manner.

4. Manage Conflict Productively

All parties within a company need to be able to identify where real counter-productive conflict exists and direct problem-solving skills toward resolving them, without the need for involvement from a boss or external party. This will be good for creating better awareness of both your co-workers opinions and your own, and will help contribute to better cohesion and success as a team.

5. Learn How to Learn

This may be ‘the most important self-direction behaviour’, simply because of the pace of change in our working environment, and the fact that employees often need to adapt to situations and learn new skills without being told exactly what to do first.

6. Manage to Change

In this point, Sharlyn emphasises why self-direction is important for both individuals and organisations to successfully move forward in our ever changing business environment:

As a final note, a quote from Sharlyn’s summary on why we need to cultivate self-direction in ourselves, and help employees to do the same:

Take the time to click over and read the full white paper here.

Here are just 5 pointers:

Strong leader

While everyone involved in the team needs to pull their weight and work equally, there needs to be a definite leader – the one who takes ultimate responsibility for the team’s delivery in the end. The leader should also provide guidance when it comes to defining team members’ roles, and decision-making.

Specific roles

Each person needs to know exactly what they are responsible for, as well as the responsibilities of their fellow team mates to ensure accountability across the whole team. It also helps to keep co-workers from stepping on others’ toes, or unknowingly working at cross-purposes.

Quantifiable goals

It goes without saying that SMART goals are the way to go. While goals should be realistic, it is also a good idea to set a few stretch goals for some extra motivation and encouragement. Where possible, longer term goals should be broken down into shorter term ‘pieces’ so that ‘small wins’ can be acknowledged and celebrated along the way.

Effective communication

Teams need to be able to communicate and collaborate easily, and working in close proximity is vital for optimizing team functioning. It is also interesting to note that it is often not the communication itself that is important – how team members communicate is the main predictor of success.

100% committed

The most successful teams are those whose members are completely committed to the team and their work, but not obsessively so. There is a healthy balance between working hard or overtime when it is required, but not sacrificing their family time on a regular basis. Finding the right balance is important for retaining consistency in a team’s performance.

Click image to enlarge.

But it seems that those ‘decision-making and hiring’ challenges are certainly outweighed by the benefits of adopting a ROWE. We’ve seen it done successfully at Morning Star, who’s story was previously shared on our blog in ‘Fire all the managers’, as well as ‘Radical Autonomy: A Self-Management Philosophy’.

Silverman provides further examples of companies that are successfully adopting this (lack of) management style:

This “boss free” environment is also embraced at GitHub, as employee Tim Clem explains:

While there are numerous benefits to be experienced from adopting such a work environment, it’s important to note a few ‘prerequisites’ for making the system really work successfully:

• Employees should be highly self-motivated
• Employees should embrace autonomy
• Employees should be excellent team players and communicators

In the article, Timothy makes the point that it’s not all the company’s responsibility to drive employee engagement:

While Timothy does acknowledge that extrinsic motivators are certainly important for encouraging employees, he stresses the role of intrinsic motivation when it comes to employee engagement:

Take the time to read Timothy’s full article, where he further discusses 6 intrinsic drivers of employee engagement.

With this in mind, the primary objective when it comes to teams is to determine what the team will be accomplishing – is the main purpose of the team implementation, or is it creation and innovation? The right approach needs to be found according to the team’s function. Samuel Bacharach explains this excellently in his article ‘Leading Teams: Find the Right Balance Between Hands-on and Hands-off’:

He then gives 4 great pieces of advice on how to find that balance, and help optimize team performance. Here’s a summary:

1. Encourage discussion and dialogue

This doesn’t mean having lots of structured meetings. It’s important to facilitate spontaneous communications among team members through optimizing their work environment.

2. Give autonomy, within bounds

People and teams need to have a degree of freedom in their work to help maintain motivation and create a sense of ownership of their work. But it is also important to set boundaries and very clear guidelines to ensure that teams don’t go off track.

3. Recognize both the team and the individual

Celebrating a team’s work is important for fostering team cohesion, but the individual mustn’t be forgotten. Everyone still needs recognition for their individual contributions, or motivation levels could diminish over time

4. Encourage debate

This is particularly important for teams that fall on the creative/innovative side of the spectrum. As it turns out, debate and constructive criticism stimulate ideas and creativity, rather than stifle them.

• Greater clarity about what the organisation needs me to do – 25%
• Development opportunities and training – 23%
• Regular, specific feedback about how I’m doing – 14%
• More resources – 14%

On his Blanchard LeaderChat blog, David Witt recently reported some results of a PwC study which took feedback from 19 000 exit interviews in account.  The statistics revealed are eye-opening, and are in alignment with the opening quote in this post.

5 top reasons employees leave their job:

• Limited career/promotion opportunities (16%)
• Supervisor lacked respect/support (13%)
• Compensation (12%)
• Job duties boring/no challenge (11%)
• Supervisor lacked leadership skills (9%)

The above stats serve as evidence that the ‘softer’ side of work, the things that are often harder to measure, do have a real impact, and they do really matter. To quote from David’s post:

But how do you know if your these needs are being met? Here are a few questions managers can ask themselves to get an idea – or asking employees these questions directly would be even better!

• Do you give your employees enough autonomy – are they provided with the framework to take ideas, and run with them?
• Are there opportunities for advancement for those who seek it?
• Do your employees get regular recognition and feedback?
• Are your employees aware of how important their role is in the context of the organisation?