Except from "Declaring Independence in the Workplace"

Thanks to Teresa Amabile and Steve Kramer for this sage insight into management boundaries and balance!

To be truly intrinsically motivated and to gain a sense of achievement when they do make progress, people need to have some say in their own work. What's more, when employees have freedom in how to do the work, they are more creative. Two key aspects of autonomy are having the ability to make meaningful decisions in work and then feeling confident that — barring serious errors or dramatic shifts in conditions — those decisions will hold. If they often get overridden by management, people quickly lose the motivation to make any decision, which severely inhibits progress. Work gets delayed because people feel like they have to wait and "check in" before they can begin or change anything.

In our research across industries as diverse as consumer products, chemicals, and high tech, we found many knowledge workers whose extensive expertise went untapped and whose initial excitement about tackling challenging projects got deflated. Too often, the culprits were managers who believed that to do a good job, they had to direct the work — tell people exactly what to do and how to do it, making changes as they alone saw fit. These managers failed to realize three things:

1. Managers themselves almost never have the specific knowledge that well-trained, experienced professionals have about the work they are doing. Failing to draw on that knowledge is a lamentable waste of resources.
2. Professionals become demoralized, disgusted, and apathetic if they lack the autonomy to at least co-direct the work they are doing.
3. Organizations lose out in a big way if their professionals become disengaged. Even if those professionals don't decamp for greener pastures, they're not doing their best work.