Scaling With Purpose Kit: Letting Purpose Drive Self-Management

**SPEAKER_2** (0:04)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Skasz** (0:17)
Well, welcome back to The Bliss Business Podcast Series, Scaling With Purpose. Our 10-minute podcast series where we explore how to embed purpose into every level of your organization. I'm Stephen Skasz here with Tulio Siragusa. Hey, Tulio.

**Tulio Siragusa** (0:32)
It's good to be back.

**Stephen Skasz** (0:34)
Yes. So today's episode is all about letting purpose drive self-management. So we've discussed or we will discuss how self-managed teams in these next level organizations use purpose as a guide, reducing the need for top-down control and unlocking greater autonomy, innovation and trust. Please catch our last episodes. We're kind of building on each of these logically here. So the topic is at the core of what makes these next level organizations really so powerful. So traditional hierarchies, they manage or they rely on managers to oversee and control and direct teams. But in these self-managed teams, purpose becomes the real leader. When everyone is clear on the organization's purpose, teams can make decisions autonomously and stay aligned and really are much more flexible and fast at times when they're really good at this versus that top-down decision-making that can get bottlenecked somewhere. So Tulio, let's dive in here.

**Tulio Siragusa** (1:37)
So I want to first clarify for those who might be thinking self-management is like flat or chaos or even socialism, that's not what self-management is. I just want to be clear about that. So it's actually quite the opposite of this idea of chaos and absolutely like everybody just does their own thing. It's really about creating an environment where teams don't need constant oversight because they have a shared sense of purpose to guide their actions. So it's not some boss who's dictating every step to do and an un-doubling boss, and another person, and another person, and all these layers of management. No, it's the purpose that everyone shares in that becomes the boss.
So when everybody has this sense of purpose that guides their action, the authority is shared, and then this purpose really replaces the need for micromanagement and allows individuals to take ownership of their work. And it's based on this idea that everybody's going to be adults. So it works because you're going to be an adult who's accountable and responsible for yourself. So to break it down, self-managing teams operate in three key principles, which connects directly to purpose. One is clarity of purpose. That's the North Star, right? So having clarity of why are we here? What are we looking to accomplish? What's our purpose here? Then two is the empowered decision-making with purposeful boundaries, right? So it's understanding what can I do within the confinement of achieving this purpose? And what are my limitations within that? Because that's also showing respect for various teams who have different specialized capabilities. And then three, it's trust and accountability anchored on purpose. So it's trusting that my peers are going to act like adults as I am, and that they're going to take care of what they're accountable for, and they're also anchored on the similar purpose.

**Stephen Skasz** (3:40)
Yeah. So really that first principle there, the clarity of purpose as the North Star, that's really just, I mean, that's key to everything here. So for these self-management teams to work properly, they need to understand the organization's purpose, and this provides context for every decision. So if a team knows the why that the organization exists and the impact it's trying to make, then they can ask, you know, the middle of their workday or middle of whatever they're working on, does this decision move us closer to that purpose? So that clarity kind of eliminates the need for constant top-down guidance and allows them to freewheel a little bit more and be in alignment with everyone.

**Tulio Siragusa** (4:25)
Yeah, and that's such a powerful point because it also allows for self-governance, right? Do I want to work 15 hours, 8 hours, the middle of the day, later in the day? It all depends on how I can support this purpose. Take, for example, Buurtzorg.
We talked about them in the last episode there, a Dutch health care company. Their teams are completely self-managing, and their purpose is delivering compassionate client-centered care, which serves as their North Star. So think about this beautiful, empathetic purpose that they have. Every decision they can make, as long as they go back to the question, is this helping us deliver compassionate client-centered care? They can't go wrong. So because of this purpose that it's clear, nurses can make decisions on their own about patient care. Teams, schedules and resource allocations, all these things don't need managerial approval to get done, because as long as it supports that purpose, then that becomes the guiding star that makes every decision possible.