Guardrails Support Autonomy in the Workplace

Most peo­ple love to have a sense of con­trol in their lives. They like to have auton­o­my in the work­place and the free­dom to make their own choices.

Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, one of the best ways for peo­ple to be suc­cess­ful is to give them rules or guardrails.

And some­times in many orga­ni­za­tions that move very quick­ly, there aren’t enough of these guardrails in place.

Like the com­pa­ny we worked with where account­abil­i­ty for a very impor­tant process wasn’t crys­tal clear between two dif­fer­ent depart­ments. The dri­ven leader of one depart­ment sim­ply took charge. This was with the well-inten­tioned desire to improve it and to help the com­pa­ny be successful.

Under­stand­ably, this cre­at­ed con­flict with the oth­er depart­ment. They had a dif­fer­ent view of how the process should be car­ried out and thought they should be dri­ving it.

Both were just try­ing to do their best, but after a lot of fric­tion for a year, the exec­u­tive team had to step in and found that, ide­al­ly, account­abil­i­ty should have been with the oth­er department.

All this could have been avoid­ed with defined account­abil­i­ty and clear guardrails, at the begin­ning. With­out them, peo­ple are just going to do what they think is best – and, some­times, the loud­est voice or the most ambi­tious per­son in room takes charge, which might not always be the right thing to do.

Guardrails allow peo­ple to pre-fil­ter a bunch of deci­sions, with­in a process, rather than hav­ing to make a whole bunch of ad hoc deci­sions and con­stant­ly going to their man­ag­er for approval on every lit­tle thing.

Some Exam­ples

• In sales envi­ron­ments. Some orga­ni­za­tions allow sales­peo­ple to nego­ti­ate a final price of a prod­uct or ser­vice. Oth­ers say that every deal must be signed off by the sales leader. And some oth­ers give peo­ple a range, with a tar­get mar­gin or sales price to achieve; and if the deal is with­in these para­me­ters, sales­peo­ple can pro­ceed. Any­thing out­side those para­me­ters needs to get approval.
• Cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion. One com­pa­ny focus­es on improv­ing cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion by ship­ping orders on time. If oper­a­tions saw that there was going to be a late ship­ment they were free to man­age it as per nor­mal. How­ev­er, if there was a delay with a top-20 cus­tomer, there was a guardrail in place. They need­ed to have a dis­cus­sion and get approval from the head of operations.
• Invest­ment cri­te­ria. Estab­lished, agreed-to prin­ci­ples that we would con­sid­er. For exam­ple, min­i­mum prof­itabil­i­ty as a per­cent­age, min­i­mum prof­itabil­i­ty as a val­ue with­in three years, min­i­mum return on cap­i­tal and a thresh­old of the impact on cash flow.

The Chal­lenge

• Where can you offer your team more auton­o­my in the work­place by set­ting up guardrails to guide their decisions?

About Kevin:

CEOs typ­i­cal­ly place their first call to Coach Kevin with a cri­sis to solve. They stay because of his busi­ness acu­men and no-holds-barred, tell-it-like-it-is style.

Kevin’s career spans 20 years, over a dozen coun­tries and four con­ti­nents. He’s worked with hun­dreds of CEOs and exec­u­tives, help­ing them to break through busi­ness chal­lenges, grow their com­pa­nies and find per­son­al suc­cess along the way.

These expe­ri­ences inspired Kevin’s book, Your Oxy­gen Mask First, in which he reveals the 17 habits every leader must know to tran­scend the per­ils of suc­cess, and achieve even more.

About Lawrence & Co:

Lawrence & Co’s work focus­es on sus­tain­able and enhanced growth for you and your busi­ness. Our diverse and expe­ri­enced group of advi­sors can help your lead­ers and exec­u­tive teams stay com­pet­i­tive through the use of var­i­ous learn­ing tools includ­ing work­shops, webi­na­rs, exec­u­tive retreats, or one-to-one coaching.

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