Autonomy in a team of people working on the same goal has a lot of benefits, but the one that is most valuable from my perspective is the creativity to create solutions and innovations because allows the development of the skills in a high-skilled team to the maximum possible. One of the challenges that team leaders face is building this functional autonomy because several times the way in which the goals are communicated is confused by giving the team a list of tasks to complete and not space to propose solutions.

One of the most important concepts to have in mind when we talk about autonomy is empowerment. Because when we understand that autonomy is the capacity to work in an independent way, we know that we need to relate the level of team members’ empowerment to have that independence.

That’s why to provide enough empowerment to allow functional autonomy in teamwork, is necessary to count on the following aspects and share them with the members of the team, to understand them together:

1. Vision about what the team wants to achieve.
2. The structure is expected to work on.
3. Creative space to letting some space to contribute with solutions and innovation.
4. Continuous improvement in the work cycle.

Vision

This should be the first thing to be shared with the team because this will give a direction about what is needed to be based on and understand any decision that is made in the process to execute necessary tasks.

Vision could come in the form of a goal or the equivalent of a work strategy to achieve a specific goal. It means that vision could be a strategy created by the team leaders to achieve a step towards the goal and not necessarily the final goal, which could be composed of more than one step to the goal.

A vision must provide clarity about the current state (as a reference point of what is intended to be improved) and a visual projection and exemplify about what is expected to achieve.

To be correctly aligned with the team members, the vision should be clearly understandable by the people involved. It means that doesn’t be communicated in a unilateral way without having an understanding confirmation. That’s why if the communication is made in an asynchronous way, must be a written confirmation that was read and understood, and the people that don’t understand it must provide feedback about what they didn’t understand in a way of questions or comments, until the point that ALL the people assume the responsibility to understand the vision that will follow as a team. This understatement should be an agreement or a disagree and commit statement for every team member.

Structure

When the vision is clear is necessary to DEFINE a structure to allow the team to understand the limits around which they will work to create solutions and approaches to achieve the expectations.

This definition must be enough descriptive about what is expected to be done to reach the describe vision and must include the following things:

Describe WHAT is expected to be completed. This could be made by completing the information below:

• Describe an overview (one line) of what is expected to be done.
• List of functionalities that must have the thing to be done.
• Clarify what is not expected to be done, to understand the limits of the definition.
• A visual reference about what is expected to be done (could be a draw, a mockup, a draft, or a video explanation).

Describe WHY is expected to be completed. Understanding the motives about the ideas defined is expected to be completed will allow to the autonomy of the teamwork, and will be possible if the following questions are answeredÑ

• Who will benefit from the thing that will be done?
• What benefits the thing expected to be done will produce?
• There is any evidence about the needs are satisfied with the thing expected to be done?

A clear definition of the ideas that are expected to be executed to achieve the defined vision will provide a solid structure for a team that could be completely open to developing creative solutions.

Creative space

This will be the center of the execution for the autonomy in a team because is where all the members could be free to create, innovate or propose any solution without having validation one by one of their proposals.

This creative openness must be in a regulated environment through the structure that provides a clear definition of what is expected to achieve. In this way, every team member can do whatever they want and however they want, always that comply the described definitions about what is expected to be done.

Creative space is the playground for every team member, where they will have their own responsibility and understatement of what is need to be done, the freedom to create anything to solve or innovate.

When leading a team work through the creation of creative spaces, the capacity to create solutions increases as well as the dependencies are reduced between the team members and the person in charge. Because the most important part of the innovation is to decide HOW is gonna be done and a task is open to be solved by any team member, sharing the responsibility of ideating the solution and not only complying with the tasks assigned to them.

Continuous improvement

All the operational practices must be managed with a continuous improvement approach to have a constant focus on the efficiency of the execution. That’s why to maintain a functional autonomy practice is important to understand what is expected to achieve with them (benefits), what aspects must be complied with to allow them to happen, and observe and measure that is doing well (with a clear understanding that doing well means: produce results and the team members are satisfied).

What are the benefits to have functional autonomy in teamwork?

• Commitment from all parties equally, because understanding the vision and having a structure, the creative space gives autonomy to all to contribute and take ownership and responsibility to make it happen.
• Remove dependencies on the team leaders, with the shared vision and defined structure about what is expected to achieve, the team leaders provide enough information to allow the team members to have the freedom to create anything they want, without being asked if they can or not.

What aspects must be complied with and be understood to allow functional autonomy to happen in teamwork?

• The team leaders must share clearly the vision of where the team is going and define what is expected to be done to reach it.
• The team members must understand and confirm the understatement of the vision and the definition of what is expected to be done, in order to define how they gonna do it.

How we can measure if functional autonomy is happening well in teamwork?

• Must exist a confirmation of understatement about the shared vision with the team. Can’t be not even one person in the team that doesn’t confirm that understands what the vision is about. If any person doesn’t understand, must be expressed it to clarify to them and be completely aligned as a team.
• Must comply with the complete definition of what is going to be done and why is expected to be done as the clear structure of the team will develop their action plan.
• Within the creative space must be a commitment between the team members to list and describe every solution they will execute to comply with the expectations.