Self-Management

What is Self-Management?

Self-managed Teams

A self-managed team shares the responsibility of planning and executing the work, without the supervision of a manager. Team members take ownership of their workflow, processes, schedules, roles, and more. Team members make commitments to each other, and those commitments, rather than hierarchy, drive the work.

Wait. No hierarchy?

Even without hierarchy, leadership and accountability still exist in self-managed teams.

The lack of conventional management doesn’t necessarily turn the teams into free-for-alls. Instead of a traditional management hierarchy authorizing every decision, the teams closest to the work make the call, and are able to move much faster to tackle new opportunities and challenges

Self-managed teams often achieve the structure other management styles offer following the principle of hierarchy of roles.

The role of Roles

Our team structure distributes decision-making power among team members, rather than one person (like a manager) having all of the authority. It isn’t so much about empowerment, but about realizing that we already have the power to drive our own work. In summary: our roles do not depend on power, instead, we focus on the decision-making rights of roles.