Autonomy & Alignment
Swedish coach and consultant, Henrik Kniberg, in his description of Spotify’s way of working, created the aligned autonomy matrix, which beautifully illustrates the degree of freedom within boundaries. He provides a minimal structure to prevent chaos. He states that team autonomy is meaningless without clear direction (alignment) and if teams are not aligned with organizational goals. These are the boundaries, this is the framework for the team’s self-organization. As long as teams stay within these, they can decide how to approach things.
In Kniberg’s example, when autonomy and alignment are balanced, the leader will ask a team: “Find a solution to the following problem: we need to cross the river.” It is left to the team how to do this. When there is no alignment but a lot of autonomy, it’s uncertain what the team is working on. When there is no room for autonomy but only alignment, a command & control style emerges: “Build a bridge.”
An interesting exercise is to go into conversation with a leader and their teams with the aligned autonomy matrix. Discuss together the following questions:
- here do they feel they stand in the model? What do they notice this from? Name some examples.
- Where would they like to be? And does this apply to all situations?
- What is needed to grow towards that and bring autonomy and alignment more into balance?
These questions raise awareness and can serve as a starting point for the first step towards self-organization.
Aligned autonomy matrix (Kniberg, 2014)
