Employees: Autonomous Resources or Replaceable Automatons?
By Anthony I. Mathews, Beyster Institute Staff

Pretty much every motivational speech I’ve ever heard a CEO make contains that statement “our people are our most important resource.” It’s a great sentiment; no rational person would even try to refute it. At the same time, it is near the top of my list of “great heartfelt sentiments that are not really understood, especially by the utterer.”

Do we, in American business, really see our people as our most important resource? We all say it, but our behaviors would often indicate otherwise. Most often, I think what we really mean is not “most important resource” but, more precisely, “most important commodity,” or “most important tool,” and, I think you’ll agree that those are very different matters.

So what does it mean if the world’s business model (no matter what industry) thinks of people as tools rather than resources?

Certainly we care for our tools. We select them carefully to perform certain tasks (and modify them a bit if necessary). We keep them well oiled and in good repair.  And, if they get obsolete or for whatever reason fail to perform as intended, we can (and do) replace them. To me, that sounds a lot more like how we care for our lawn mower (the tool) than how we might work with and rely on our landscaper (the resource).

Nevertheless, it remains true that people are much more than tools. In fact, people are the most important resource of any organization (whether they claim it in the advertising copy or not), and how well that resource is applied to operating a business will have a lot to do with any firm’s success.

So, what does this all have to do with employee ownership companies? Well, I think it speaks directly to the second factor in our growing discussion of factors that separate employee ownership companies from others.

As you might recall, we are exploring factors and conditions that separate the best employee ownership companies from other kinds of companies. So far, we have proposed that the four factors that can define successful employee ownership are:

• Information
• Autonomy
• Opportunity
• Respect

In our last issue, we talked a little about information sharing and how to think about critical metrics in making information available, so, because we are nothing if not well organized, the subject in this issue is autonomy. And that is relevant because the difference between “resource” and “tool” is autonomy - the ability (in fact, the expectation) to think and act independently to get a job done.

Of all the features we have identified, this is the one that is probably the most at odds with a traditional corporate management style. As we have been looking at it in general terms, autonomy can be understood from the employee point of view (that is, the perspective of the resource) as:

“If I’m an owner, if I have a real stake in the future of this company, I ought to be able to do some things independently that are in the best interest of the company I own. I ought to have, at least, some discretion in how my job is done, and, in fact, it ought to be expected that I would exercise it.”

Resources are autonomous. They bring independent information and skill to a problem and we take their advice and consider it even more carefully than our own ideas. An autonomous person, though, in this context is not independent. Independence indicates a lack of common purpose, and autonomy, in this context, means independently applying skill and knowledge to a common purpose.

First, some things autonomy doesn’t mean:

1. Autonomy does not mean independent. Autonomous employee-owners are working individually to apply the unique information and skills they have to the common goal. All work together.
2. Autonomy does not mean lack of responsibility. On the contrary, autonomous employee owners are directly (and obviously) responsible for what is within their operating environment.
3. Autonomy does not mean unaccountable. In a truly autonomous work atmosphere, sharing of process and results among all the autonomous individuals is a constant, ongoing process. For that reason, constant accountability is in the very nature of autonomy.
   
   This, more than any other feature of an autonomous work environment, is in stark contrast to the world process in which the usual annual employee review is based on some sort of score related to what has happened in the past year. This is often too long past to appropriately reward successes, and it is certainly too long past to do anything to correct problems as they are happening. As far as ongoing performance feedback is concerned, in most of the world, individuals only get feedback off-cycle when the situation is dire. In autonomous employee ownership environments, the individuals are never out of touch with how their contributions fit into the overall picture and what they need to do to correct any problems.  

Autonomy may well be the hardest of the employee ownership features to create, but it is by far the most rewarding. In a truly autonomous environment individuals pull together to apply their own unique energy and skill to every process, and, if the goals are well-drawn and well-communicated, the outcome can be spectacular. It may not seem like it would be easier to be the leader of an autonomous workforce, but by report from those who are, it sure seems to be more rewarding and easier in the long run.

Please also understand that we are not, in any way, trying to minimize the value of the CEO. In fact, one of the greatest blessings we have in the employee ownership community is the group of incredibly talented, selfless and visionary people who choose to lead employee ownership companies when they could almost always better serve their practical best interest elsewhere. These leaders are in the forefront of the development of employee ownership as a way of choice to run any business, and for that resource, we must be continually grateful. After all, CEOs are just people too.

©2007 The Beyster Institute and its authors and their entities. All rights reserved.

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