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⏲️ 5min read + plenty of linked articles and useful material

Self-managing work. Why, what & how

Some lived-experience nuggets on self-managing work principles and the benefits

Within The Good Stream network we have direct lived experience of what self-management gives to individuals and organisations. We know how to go about the hard work required to make and embed the change. We offer some observations and thoughts that will help the conversations needed to get you going.


Where are you now?

Our businesses and organisations have many different ways of organising and getting the work done. For the majority, strategy and control is centralised. Information is asymmetrical and barriers exist throughout the organisation that stop creativity working for the business goals and individual voice. Top-down management and managers are the norm.

This is an ‘organisation as a machine’ where work was linear, narrow and required little flexibility of thought. Centralised control through power, control and fear. A closed value system. But there is another way.

The old way – Top-down hierarchy organisational model:

When we assume centralised, top-down strategy and decision making as an operating model we stifle the full creative power of our businesses. Barriers, and hard to climb ladders stop our innate need for personal autonomy and responsibility to, and for, our work as an individual, a team, and an entire business.


Where do you want to get?

The new, and growing way, to organise and operate as a business is through the principles of self management. This is not new and has been the operating model for some notable and successful large and small businesses around the world. All of these businesses share a common thread – all their people are free to manage their own work, organise with their team, and make their own decisions for the good of the business purpose. There are no managers in there traditional sense and every person is empowered to bring their strengths to build value for their organisation.

This is an ‘Organisation as Nature’, where work has ambiguity, is heuristic, and works in feedback loops. It is distributive control by nature. A shared value system.

New way – System value organisational model:

When we reorganise and allow information to flow freely within our business, between departments, and from beyond its boundaries we are better placed to take responsibility for our work, its social and environmental impacts, and for our own positive place in our organisation’s success.

Questions on self-management

To start this very human process there are some good questions to ask. Let’s take these questions one at a time. Tap on a + below 👇

Read all questions

What is it?

It is a way of working as an individual, a team, and a whole business with the core principles of trust, openness, transparency, personal responsibility, and autonomy.

  • Trust in yourself and in others to keep the principles.
  • Open to listening, allowing for individuality, and learning from others.
  • Transparency with context for all company information that will empower all people to be more productive and inspired by the business purpose.
  • Personal responsibility for your work, your personal growth, and the well-being of all of the business stakeholders.
  • Autonomy to express your individual strengths and have a voice in what matters across your business.

Why would I want it?

This is not something new, or new age. This is fundamentally resetting your mindset, or perhaps reawakening your understanding that people want ‘autonomy, mastery, and purpose’ over their work – It is as simple as that.

When we work within a business that operates by their own, idiosyncratic, culture of self-managing, amazing things happen.

  • Resilience in individuals and the business increases.
  • General well-being across the business dramatically improves.
  • Productivity rockets – who doesn’t want to work on things that matter to them and that have value to the organisation?
  • Loyalty to the business, it’s purpose, and all stakeholders it touches reaches new heights.

Why would the team want it?

A few, but certainly not all, of the reason to give it a try.

  • When you can work by yourself and with others with the mutual understanding that you are trusted then you are safe to do your best work. Best work for yourself , the team, and the business.
  • Within a healthy self-managing organisation you will be celebrated for your unique strengths and be given the freedom, and trust, to bring ideas to the business, regardless of age, experience, expertise, assumed status, and job title.
  • Good ideas are good ideas, wherever they originate with a self-managing business. In this way leadership is not for the few. Everyone, when consent and trust is built, becomes a leader of their work, and the good ideas they imagine.
  • You become a creative individual and not ‘human capital’ on a balance sheet.

What are the downsides?

Get it right, or more significantly, do it your way and with all your people, and not ‘too’ your people, and the downsides are few. These are some challenges we have experienced;

  • Scepticism that this will be chaos. It’s not, but it is tough. We don’t shift from old learnt behaviours easily.
  • Some people will likely leave. It’s not for everyone. Taking full responsibility for your work and actions is not how many of us have been raised and educated – at home or at work.
  • Some changes to your ways of working will fail. Trying, testing and learning are part of the process. The hard bit is allowing failure to be a blame free positive part of the change process.
  • Letting go of personal power and control is hard. Managers, in their traditional sense, are not required. But think of all that time and creativity you could release!

In reality, if you flip the way you look at these challenges they turn into positives for individuals and the business as a whole.

How long does it take?

It is never a finished ‘operating model’.

You have to go in with an open-ended and open mindset. Every positive change throws up new challenges and opportunities for trying, testing, and learning from new changes.

We do know that it does become normal, and even everyday. Over time ‘Big Change Projects’ come to be expected and embraced by even the most die-hard stick-in-the-muds.

When you experience the benefits that this way of working give you individually and as a team, you never want to go back.

How did you do it?

Having lived experience of transforming over a 6-year period to become self-managing gave us direct experience of the twists and turns that happen in people and culture change work.

  • It starts with you and your colleagues, learning to really know each other and become comfortable with being open and vulnerable. From this comes real trust in each other.
  • Learning that it’s okay to take the lead on your own ideas.
  • Consent is central to embedding this way of working. The rules, systems, and behaviours expected are critical for success.
  • Distilling it down, you just have to start, but find external help and support.

What benefits are they getting?

These are a few of the benefits the businesses experience day-to-day.

  • Buurtzorg, as of 2016, have won Best Employer of the Year award 4 out 5 times, with a staff involvement of 9.5 score. Other benefits include massively increased patient outcomes and reduced care costs.
  • FAVI are the only surviving specialist in their area in Europe. They say becoming self-managing has made them very resilient to crises like the 2008 financial crash, where no redundancies were made and they made a 3.3% net profit.
  • Double Retail is a design and project management business. This demands incredible flexibility and speed with accuracy. Self-management transformed team trust, autonomy, and system design. The result was a lean business with the ability to create long lasting customer loyalty way beyond what its size would suggest is possible within this industry.

How do I start?

We say you will start “your way, with your people, and with your idiosyncrasies.”

It will be a unique journey as their is no ‘rule book’. Some predetermined system do exist. but these try to press rigid structures onto, what is, complex and individual people work.

Some positive starting points are;

  • Talk, listen, and learn to understand who you really work with and what makes them unique.
  • Build new structure and systems around your self-managing principles. It needs more principles, expected behaviours, and systems for sharing information and getting the work done.
  • Experiment – a lot! – start with small changes and then the bigger they get the more normal it will become.

What is it?

It is a way of working as an individual, a team, and a whole business with the core principles of trust, openness, transparency, personal responsibility, and autonomy.

  • Trust in yourself and in others to keep the principles.
  • Open to listening, allowing for individuality, and learning from others.
  • Transparency with context for all company information that will empower all people to be more productive and inspired by the business purpose.
  • Personal responsibility for your work, your personal growth, and the well-being of all of the business stakeholders.
  • Autonomy to express your individual strengths and have a voice in what matters across your business.

Why would I want it?

This is not something new, or new age. This is fundamentally resetting your mindset, or perhaps reawakening your understanding that people want ‘autonomy, mastery, and purpose’ over their work – It is as simple as that.

When we work within a business that operates by their own, idiosyncratic, culture of self-managing, amazing things happen.

  • Resilience in individuals and the business increases.
  • General well-being across the business dramatically improves.
  • Productivity rockets – who doesn’t want to work on things that matter to them and that have value to the organisation?
  • Loyalty to the business, it’s purpose, and all stakeholders it touches reaches new heights.

Why would the team want it?

A few, but certainly not all, of the reason to give it a try.

  • When you can work by yourself and with others with the mutual understanding that you are trusted then you are safe to do your best work. Best work for yourself , the team, and the business.
  • Within a healthy self-managing organisation you will be celebrated for your unique strengths and be given the freedom, and trust, to bring ideas to the business, regardless of age, experience, expertise, assumed status, and job title.
  • Good ideas are good ideas, wherever they originate with a self-managing business. In this way leadership is not for the few. Everyone, when consent and trust is built, becomes a leader of their work, and the good ideas they imagine.
  • You become a creative individual and not ‘human capital’ on a balance sheet.

What are the downsides?

Get it right, or more significantly, do it your way and with all your people, and not ‘too’ your people, and the downsides are few. These are some challenges we have experienced;

  • Scepticism that this will be chaos. It’s not, but it is tough. We don’t shift from old learnt behaviours easily.
  • Some people will likely leave. It’s not for everyone. Taking full responsibility for your work and actions is not how many of us have been raised and educated – at home or at work.
  • Some changes to your ways of working will fail. Trying, testing and learning are part of the process. The hard bit is allowing failure to be a blame free positive part of the change process.
  • Letting go of personal power and control is hard. Managers, in their traditional sense, are not required. But think of all that time and creativity you could release!

In reality, if you flip the way you look at these challenges they turn into positives for individuals and the business as a whole.

How long does it take?

It is never a finished ‘operating model’.

You have to go in with an open-ended and open mindset. Every positive change throws up new challenges and opportunities for trying, testing, and learning from new changes.

We do know that it does become normal, and even everyday. Over time ‘Big Change Projects’ come to be expected and embraced by even the most die-hard stick-in-the-muds.

When you experience the benefits that this way of working give you individually and as a team, you never want to go back.

How do I do it?

Having lived experience of transforming over a 6-year period to become self-managing gave us direct experience of the twists and turns that happen in people and culture change work.

  • It starts with you and your colleagues, learning to really know each other and become comfortable with being open and vulnerable. From this comes real trust in each other.
  • Learning that it’s okay to take the lead on your own ideas.
  • Consent is central to embedding this way of working. The rules, systems, and behaviours expected are critical for success.
  • Distilling it down, you just have to start, but find external help and support.

Who else is doing it?

There are some big business that have be operating by self-organising principles since the 1970’s. This is not new, but it is scarce, but growing fast.

  • The biggest is Buurtzorg, a Dutch public healthcare provider – over 14,000 people strong and only founded in 2006. All working in teams of 12 people, self-organising their day-to-day work, with no central managers or oversight.
  • FAVI are a French brass parts manufacturer. Transformed in the 1980’s to be team led, in their words “An unusual management that promotes a constant search for Customer Love, trust in human being and innovation.”
  • Double Retail, a small independent retail design and build business in Bristol, UK, is our direct experience that you can read more about by following the link below.

💡 Read more of Double Retail’s story here 📓

Become people positive through self-managing principles

To condense the potential of becoming a self-managing organisation we have put together this primer slide deck. get in touch and we can chat some more about our direct experience;

Articles in this series

People-positive organisations

All Posts, Self-management
Build a high-trust workplace through transforming from a traditional top-down hierarchy to one operating self-managing principles.
03.06.2021
https://thegood.stream/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Open-sauce_POST.png 530 650 Matt Tipping https://thegood.stream/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/The-Good-Stream-logo-small.svg Matt Tipping2021-06-03 15:22:142021-06-03 15:24:32People-positive organisations

Self-management questions

All Posts, Self-management
Some lived-experience nuggets on self-managing work principles and the benefits
03.06.2021
https://thegood.stream/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Self-management-question_POST.png 530 650 Matt Tipping https://thegood.stream/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/The-Good-Stream-logo-small.svg Matt Tipping2021-06-03 13:18:172021-12-20 14:16:50Self-management questions

Self-management change

All Posts, Self-management
Create the joy and well-being of belonging to an organisation that celebrates individuality, autonomy, creativity, self-organisation, and intrinsic responsibility.
02.06.2021
https://thegood.stream/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/carrotssticks_POST-1.png 530 650 Matt Tipping https://thegood.stream/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/The-Good-Stream-logo-small.svg Matt Tipping2021-06-02 15:25:342021-06-02 15:33:35Self-management change

More good thinking

The Good Stream circle
byMatt Tipping/Published03.06.2021/Last edited20.12.2021/inAll Posts, Self-management/tags:people positive, self-management, self-organising
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