At Spotify we value Autonomy extremely highly, it is one of our core guiding principles. To be truly fast and responsive, we need decisions to be made as close to the actual work as possible. We aim to remove communication overhead and bureaucracy and improve quality and speed of decisions by having people with the right context make them. We’ll tell you about what Autonomy means to us, and how we as leaders give people the freedom and help they need to perform. Supporting autonomy goes all the way from individual behavior to team coaching to organizational constructs and we will provide several examples of all of this

1. Why autonomy
is at the heart
of agility
Kristian Lindwall & Cliff Hazell
@ixhd@klindwall

2. How do you build
the perfect
organisation?

3. The perfect organisation
– a recipe for success

4. Consistent rapid agile process
Accountability
matrix
Time tracking
Centralised
working
processes

5. This is based on the
following beliefs

6. People are by nature
lazy

7. Outcomes are
predictable

8. Mistakes and failure are
waste and must be
avoided at all cost

9. Managers always know
best

10. ?

11. Consistent Rapid Agile Process

13. People are self motivated
and want to do great work

14. Outcomes are not
predictable

15. A safe to fail
environment is
crucial for an
innovative culture

16. Decisions are best
made close to the
work in “real time” “When we tell people what to do,
we bypass their experience,
creativity and Knowledge”
- Esther Derby

19. 80+ teams in 5 sites

20. High functioning
organisation

21. Autonomía

22. Alignment
Autonomy

23. Alignment
Autonomy
Micromanaging
organization
Indifferent
culture
Authoritative
organization
Conformist
culture
Entrepreneurial
organization
Chaotic
culture
Innovative
organization
Collaborative
culture

24. Autonomous
teams. Cool.
So what do
leaders do?

26. Leaders foster leadership
Support the growth of people and teams
Support the org to be autonomous

27. “Clarity, Conditions and Constraints,
are the three levers for creating an
environment for leadership at all
levels”
- Esther Derby

28. Attend to Clarity
Context
Stakeholders
Expectations
Purpose

29. Clarity vs Detail

30. BFS
(Browse, Feed, Search)
Artist
Team X
Team Y Team Z
MUSIC PLAYER
TRIBE
We help our users
find what they are
looking for! We connect
artists with our
users!
SPOTIFY
We help our users
find, save and play
music
We give the world
the right music for
every moment
CLIENT
INFRASTRUCTURE
TRIBE
We enable feature
teams to innovate
and iterate lightning
fast

34. Establish
Conditions
PoliciesStructures

36. Establishing a
learning culture from
day 1

37. A workplace that
drives collaboration
and the growth of
relationships

38. Design
appropriate
Constraints
ExpectationsBoundaries

39. Constraints on the
team level

41. Getting some
equipment

42. Story Time

43. Doing a massive
reorg

44. ?
150 people

45. How we completely changed the org structure
Alliance Mission
- Narrative
- Feature Ownership
- Bets
----------------------
----------------------
----------------------
1
Org Options
- Clusters / Groupings
- Missions
- Metrics
3
How to plan
2-day offsite?
5
Plan offsite Offsite
How should we organise?
(more detail)
6
7
Proposed structure
RFC
----------------------
----------------------
----------------------
----------------------
----------------------
----------------------
?
!
8
!
?
Staffing
9
½ Day Workshop
How should we organise around our mission(s)? - High level
1
2
3
-Stakeholders
-Mission
-Metrics
-Features
-Systems
Planned, facilitated by
coaches + Alliance
leads
2
Squads
- Discuss
- Feedback
Get input
from squads
4

46. Staffing

47. Dealing with team
conflict

48. Wrapping this up...

49. How do you build
the perfect
organisation?

50. How do you build
a great
organisation?
Here is what we believe
will take you a long way

51. To enable autonomy
Give people and teams
the freedom to do their
best work

52. Walk the Talk

53. Autonomy is a
journey, not a
destination.

54. Attend to Clarity
Establish Conditions
Design appropriate Constraints

55. Thank you!
Cliff Hazell
@ixhd
Kristian Lindwall
@klindwall