Autonomy and management: why an autonomous team isn’t always self-managed.
For weeks now, I’ve been facilitating and supporting team dynamics as a Project Manager at Lab9. We accumulate hours, deliverables, boards, meetings—but what I really observe, like someone fine-tuning an instrument, is when a team begins to move on its own. Not out of inertia, not due to lack of leadership, but from shared conviction.
Not every autonomous team is a self-managed one. Sometimes there are tasks in motion, boards being updated, and deliverables underway… but that doesn’t guarantee there’s a healthy, conscious, or aligned dynamic. True self-management is something else. It’s when a team doesn’t need to wait for instructions to move forward—but still chooses to communicate. It’s when each member knows what to do, but also why they’re doing it and what it serves.
In my role, I’m not a passive observer. I’m a facilitator, an interpreter, and often a mirror. Because self-management isn’t possible without certain conditions: clarity, focus, a sense of purpose, structure, and—yes—follow-up.
A self-managed team isn’t a directionless one. It’s a team that has learned to make aligned decisions, with shared judgment. One that knows its limits, but doesn’t confine itself to them. One that acts with autonomy—not out of disconnection, but out of commitment to a common purpose. One that knows when to solve independently and when to escalate a problem with clarity.
In an environment where the urgent constantly threatens to devour the important, the greatest act of professional maturity we can cultivate is this: to create clear ways of working that allow teams to make autonomous decisions without losing direction.
Behind every product and service, there are values.
Sometimes we focus so much on deliverables that we forget what team really delivers is value—through a working framework.
A product or service might be technically well-executed, but if it was developed in a context of burnout, isolation, or distrust, that will eventually show. Not in the interface, but in the team dynamic. Not in the deliverable, but in the team that quietly falls apart.
That’s why, in all my years of collaborating with different teams, I keep coming back to the same idea: the underlying values —the ones you don’t see in the backlog but that show up in daily decisions—are what determine whether a team thrives or just survives, and with it, the entire organization.
I’m talking about simple things—yet deeply strategic:
- Asking for help, even if you’re afraid of seeming less competent.
- Trusting someone else’s expertise, even if it means temporarily letting go of control.
- Escalating a decision, not out of laziness, but because you understand its impact goes beyond your role.
- Handing over leadership in a meeting, when someone says to a peer—no hierarchy needed— “you lead today”
In my experience, values are not soft skills—they’re hard conditions that make work happen in a human, sustainable, and impactful way.
When teams understand that collaborating isn’t about looking good, but about amplifying each other; that communication isn’t flooding Slack with messages, but knowing what to say, when, and why—when that becomes second nature… that’s when true self-management shows up.
Culture is built in those everyday gestures. It’s not a slogan—it’s a practice. And it’s that practice that moves organizations forward, far more than any tool, framework, or methodology.
And that’s why I never get tired of saying it: behind every successful project, there’s an invisible network of sustained values. And someone—often quietly—who made sure to uphold them.
