Autonomy at Work: A Contemporary Dilemma

JR, collage of a photo on the ground, Flatiron Plaza, New York City, 2015

“Be autonomous (and obey)!”

The aspiration to autonomy corresponds to very strong contemporary expectations. We ambition to be self-governing, to have self-directing freedom, and especially moral independence. We want to seize the privilege of our lives by being who we are, to paraphrase the famous Joseph Campbell’s quote, dear to Oprah Winfrey.

In an era that still seems to be more often than not characterized by the perfection of means and the confusion of aims (Albert Einstein), we compulsively buy in airport shops self-help books adorned with quotes from Nietzsche, Einstein and Marcus Aurelius, craving the promises of contemporary managerial literature on agility, resilience and happiness at work. What is key is to exploit and make the most of every life moment, to draw “life lessons” and “optimize” ourselves, #inspiration #motivation #success #mindfulness.
Working from home or not, we demand that our job has meaning and contributes to a life worth living, allowing us to “grow” and be “whole” in a society that expect from individuals to realize their “authentic self”.

In accordance with the zeitgeist, the corporate world has placed at the center of its performance management tools employees who are increasingly asked to be individually responsible and autonomous — which has also simplified their evaluation on a yearly basis, with roles and achievements detached from each other and independent of contextual variations.

And although some HR departments may still focus on longstanding informal “presenteeism” based indicators, current trends have nudged many to focus on the meaning and quality of life at work, realizing that they have a profound impact on the societal reputation of business, and are all the more important as the boundaries between professional projects and the concerns of personal life have become blurred.

We could stop the rambling here. And move on.

Perhaps it is not that simple.

Even though employees are “invited” to attend “trust and autonomy” trainings, more often than not the organizations to which they belong are still inspired by scientific management and structured around “control and compliance”.

Grimacing in the corridors is occasionally suspected and some buzzing and puzzling contradictions may be felt.

Managers portray themselves as bold and courageous leaders in engagement surveys, but around the institutional coffee machines the culture seems to be perceived by some low performers as staid and risk-averse.

The obsession with objective metrics and the thirst for data of the information systems that rely on them, have not died out yet, far from it. This legacy from our industrial past, where human beings were treated as resources is still alive and well in several organizations. The narrative has been internalized: we want to rely on data to maximize “Human Capital Development opportunities” (sic.), and to become more agile in the workplace with less “singular specialization” (sic.). There is a new common hope that “artificial intelligence [will] drive the learning journey for today and tomorrow” (sic.). And we count our steps around the office on our smartwatches.

To keep up with the pace and the thrill of the speed of our times, organizations increase the standardization and automatization of processes to thrive for efficiency but, bringing new constraints, it also directly impacts the autonomy of workers; it’s not that unusual that some of them gradually lose confidence in their ability to exert control over their own behavior, motivation, and social environment.

Where the intensification of work is felt despite budgetary restrictions, and where the increase in workload weighs more and more on the workers facing unrealistic demands, they keep a low profile, and everyone quietly manages the situation as best they can, according to their abilities, experience and own values. In times of war, those who can’t adapt would be labeled collateral damage, but hopefully we are at peace, the family is still a popular metaphor for the organization (sometimes even vice versa), respect is a common core corporate value, and the human need to be welcomed at “the party”, and not to be left out, is strong.

Periodically, when the organization finds itself in difficulty and this can no longer be avoided, when the annoying noise is too perceptible and obvious, HR executives feel inspired and start to print new guidelines to re-launch management discovery programs, adding new injunctions to local managers, to do this and not to do that, to help them “grow as leaders”. And to bring back order.
Entrenched in open spaces with no attributed desks, corporate professionals are nevertheless beginning to feel weary, remembering or imagining with nostalgia the pride in work that animated their artisan ancestors, and that constituted a powerful engine of identity construction. On occasions, they even dare to fantasize about the return of end-to-end jobs, a way of working that would allow each person to take ownership of work methods, and not just results by conforming to performance objectives set by others. Where such impertinent considerations are too unpleasant for peace of mind and too tricky for job safety, they are quickly repressed without drama, occasionally provoking more or less severe episodic anxiety attacks.

Perhaps no one portrayed subdued anger at an increasingly mechanized world as clearly as Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times (1936!), in which the Tramp works on an assembly line only to see himself getting caught up in the gears of the massive machine. Commenting on his satire, which at the time gave the actor a reputation as a radical, Chaplin said that the film “started from an abstract idea, an impulse to say something about the way life is being standardized and channelized, men turned into machines — and the way I felt about it.”

At first glance, with the rise of autonomy, we could have wondered if the corporate world had joined the ideals of the old anarchist and existentialist law, which wants the individual to be autonomous, responsible for oneself and one’s actions, but to realize that being autonomous can never be in contradiction with the system which commands because even if we manage differently than with Taylor, we still command.

And autonomy is turned into a commandment from supervisors to subordinates: “Be autonomous (and obey)!”
(The voice adapts to the message, and can be soft, almost unintelligible and equally assertive, or energetic and suave, mixing imposing bursts of laughter with some slightly spontaneous hypocrisy, natural charisma and inspired swagger, alternating in the same sentence sneering platitudes with thinly veiled threats.)

The paradoxical injunction places “double constraints” on individuals and teams, exacerbating emotionally distressing tensions, especially if constantly implied. Such a dilemma in communication, or double bind, confronts individuals to the fact that a successful response to one request will result in a failed response to the other, and vice versa, such that there will be no way to be perceived right, no matter how one responds. It is simply impossible to solve the underlying dilemma.

More or less consciously, knowingly and deliberately used as a form of control without overt coercion, double binds generate confusion, which makes them difficult to respond to and resist. The level of felt ambiguity increases and tends to confine individuals facing the contradictions to ambivalence.

Individuals or groups get stuck and lose their capacity to communicate about the situation, thus being unable to learn about it, and it’s not long before the double bind is reproduced by the individuals themselves caught in the loop, which could lead to a generalized institutionalized inability to learn how to learn.

At some point, we may all be struggling with double binds, specifically tailored to us, or more generally embedded in our environment.

To be able to interpret the situation and to “reframe” it, we would need to have the courage to face our willful ignorance and dare to identify the paradoxes, to discuss them — to meta-communicate about them, for example by reflecting on the way we may underestimate how individual actions are combined into institutional efforts. Having focused on autonomy, have we forgotten that individual actions, in order to be effective, require the efforts of other actors in a shared and interdependent framework?

Unfortunately, it is precisely this capacity to reflect that is disrupted in situations where double binds are active.

From time to time, if we feel confused, we could pause for a moment and reflect on the wise words of Grand Seiko’s master watchmaker Yoshifusa Nakazawa: “Of course we teach the types of basics, standards, and work processes that can be written down, but there are many aspects of watchmaking where a craftsman, including myself, has to rely on his own feelings and sensibilities. It’s hard to put this into words, so it’s best that students experience it firsthand. They have to cultivate this kind of intuition.” (Retrieved from Seiko website, 2022)

We are all wandering among tensed paradoxes and hopefully, through active dialogue, we find some momentary and satisfying answers as individuals and as communities.

Anyone who takes a moment to observe the surroundings can’t help but notice that the field of any culture is inhabited by dilemmas, pairs of seemingly contradictory statements that thread their way through silences and animate or stifle conversations. However well or poorly, every living culture attempts the balance of reconciling the two competing proposals, getting at it again and again, when other solutions are not considered instead, such as compromise, conflict or unilateral choices, which embroil the culture in vicious circles, like regressive spirals where each point in the circle fights against and contradicts the other.

In the field, among the crowd, if we are attentive, we can spot the successful leaders of synergy, they embrace the cultural values and sustain them in such a way that they can reinforce each other.

Transformation is slow, difficult, often frustrating, and sometimes painful. But in the long run it may well be worth it.

These are lively and exciting times, to continue to trace our path towards autonomy, not in isolation but through interaction, remembering that we only exist in relation to others, keeping a critical and caring mind alive, questioning and balancing our aspiration to express ourselves and our need to belong, daring to focus more on others and being less preoccupied with ourselves, to decide more consciously when to be free to obey or not.

Life is not a riddle to be solved.
​
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