“Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.”
- Albert Einstein

“Albert Einstein was a genius...but his brother Frank was a monster.”
- (Delightfully bad joke)

In Mary Shelley’s classic story, Victor Frankenstein creates a monster, only and inevitably to be killed by it.

In the name of autonomy, leaders have created monsters of their own making.

They have pieced together parts and set them loose only to bury their hands in remorse.

Why?

Because leaders have misunderstood the nature of autonomy, and they have overreacted in the name of autonomy.

Autonomy is essential. Leaders and those they entrust must feel that they can be in charge of their experience and actions. Studies name numerous benefits of autonomy, from greater creativity to work happiness to higher retention.

Over 70% of C-Suite leaders who feel they have full autonomy report having a very good relationship with the CEO, compared to 46% of those who believe they work without autonomy. True autonomy is good.

But autonomy can be a monster in the making, not because those who are given autonomy misuse it, but because they do so without CEO leadership in two critical areas: values and learning.

Autonomy apart from values is latent mutiny.

Values are the non-negotiable behaviors of a company. They are more than beliefs and they are certainly more than aspirations.

Values are those dynamics that a company will fight for and prevail for. The values with which you operate is what makes you distinct from other companies. You have competitors. What makes you different? If I did a study of your organization, I would likely find 4-8 behaviors that are absolutely non-negotiable.

An example: I am very happy with my bank. For me to be a customer, they needed to offer competitive products and pricing compared to other banks. They do. But I am their customer because they are driven by the value that “communication should be easy.”

Who doesn’t believe in communication? Who doesn’t aspire to better communication? But this bank put a value to it: ease. They identified how ease should be experienced, they put metrics to it, and they audit it. I get the benefit of it, and they get my loyalty because of it.

Unless they are asking for conflict, no one in that bank will operate in a way that undermines ease of communication.

Yet, too often, autonomy is given by a CEO, but company values are not communicated, upheld or enforced. Leaders you entrust are looking to get a job done. But a job completed that undermines values and disrupts culture will eventually come back to haunt you.

This is especially true when you hire from outside the company. Another way to look at this: your business has an anatomy to it. All the parts work together. Autonomy that is foreign to the anatomy will foster dysfunction.

I am not saying to put a governor on innovation. Just the opposite. But autonomy cannot act apart from the values of the greater whole. If they do, sides develop; sides lead to mutiny.

What are your values, and does everyone who is “autonomous” embrace and enforce them?

Autonomy apart from a learning community is disguised rivalry.

The CEO role is transforming from the lone hero to one who embraces balance of power, openness, fairness and teamwork.

Learning is at the heart of the transformation. Knowledge as power once promoted rivalry; now, knowledge as power is the substance of community.

Your competitive edge as a company is the ability to learn faster; as the silos within your company come down, learning must be positioned in your workflows and leveraged by your data.

In-house development will offset outside costs. Upskill and reskill will need to be personalized, manageable and immersive.

The C-suite is a learnscape.

True autonomy is companion to becoming and belonging. These three comprise the essential needs a person has to work effectively and long-term.

Becoming is a person’s ability to master skills and roles. Belonging is a person’s sense of connectedness to a whole.

Learning is the essential driver for autonomy (shaping one’s work), becoming (mastering one’s work) and belonging (connecting one’s work).

Without learning as a dynamic across the company, knowledge by some will be withheld from all until it is strategically advantageous to reveal what they know. Instead, the C-Suite learnscape values knowledge as the gameplan to team victory.

As a CEO, you surround yourself with strong leaders. Strength feeds on autonomy. But if granting autonomy has ever backfired on you, it is likely because autonomy was guided by values and mutual learning. Independence and competition betrayed it.

Days ahead cannot afford the CEO who kicks back into control and command as a protective response to autonomy gone wrong. Values and learning will protect you; autonomy, becoming and belonging will elevate you and all.

When I was a very young child, I saw the classic black and white Frankenstein movie. As the credits ran, they put a question mark next to who played the monster. I remember saying, “Mom, they don’t know who the monster was.”

We know now: autonomy gone bad.