Don’t Forget To Bring The Onion

The text discusses the transition from hunter-gatherer societies to agricultural societies, suggesting that this historical shift reduced human freedom. It draws parallels to modern organizational structures, arguing that excessive bureaucracy stifles individual responsibility and creativity. Examples from consulting work illustrate how reducing bureaucratic constraints can enhance employee autonomy, engagement, and innovation. Balancing organizational needs with individual freedom is crucial for fostering responsibility and creativity. #agriculture, #freedom, #bureaucracy, #creativity, #innovation, #organizationalstructure, #employeeautonomy

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to the Colig Experience podcast. In today's episode, we dive into bold insights

(00:09):
and groundbreaking leadership strategies that push the boundaries of conventional thinking.
We'll explore the metaphorical end of humanity's time in the Garden of Eden as a lens to view
the shift from freedom to responsibility and how this connects to modern movements like
quiet quitting. Discover how reducing bureaucracy can unleash creativity and autonomy in the

(00:34):
workplace. Get ready to challenge the status quo and ignite innovation. Let's dive in.
Cursed is the ground because of you. In toil, you shall eat of it all the days of your life.
Both thorns and thistles, it shall grow for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread. Genesis 3.17, this is how the episode of Man

(01:01):
in the Garden of Eden ends. His punishment for eating from the tree of knowledge is that from now
on, he will have to grow for himself what he eats. If we think about it, these short verses are a
condensed and fairly accurate description of the agricultural revolution that took place 10 to 12,000
years ago. To some extent, until the agricultural revolution, human beings lived in a kind of

(01:26):
Garden of Eden. They were organized in small groups of hunter-gatherers who lived at a high level
of freedom from obligations. They were not bound to any particular place and were not required
to care for the animals they ate. When something bothered them in the place where they lived,
they simply moved to another place. By the way, this is how they reached almost every place on the

(01:50):
globe in a relatively short period of time, while destroying almost half the population of large
mammals in the world. For those who thought that species extinction was a modern human hobby,
they worked far fewer hours than their agricultural descendants. They were not bound to complex
social mechanisms. They had no hierarchy and classes. There was no money or property and no

(02:15):
obligation to religious practice. Some would say they were the freest human beings in human history.
Perhaps if we continue this line of thought, we can say that throughout history, there has been an
inverse relationship between the amount of wealth, comfort and possessions we have and our ability to
be free. But it may be that to some extent, something is beginning to change. In the last

(02:40):
hundred years, and especially since the beginning of the millennium, there is more and more awareness
of the individual's freedom of choice, and we can see an increasingly greater aspiration to
liberation from the shackles of ancient institutions. The phenomenon that received the name
quiet quitting is another step in this direction. This time, the ancient institution threatening

(03:07):
the individual's freedom is their workplace. Think about it for a moment. An organization,
as its name suggests, comes to organize, to arrange, to manage the activity of a group of people.
How do we organize all this organization? With procedures, rules, organizational structure,

(03:28):
job definitions, goals, metrics, processes and other such things that can be called bureaucracy.
Bureaucracy is not a bad thing. It enables large systems to function. But at the same time,
bureaucracy limits the freedom of the individual who is supposed to operate at its center.

(03:49):
In parentheses, let us say that bureaucracy has a tendency to swell and grow regardless of the
real needs of the organization. At some point, it begins to serve itself until it is no longer
entirely clear why all the roles and rules and definitions that the organization's employees
have to work according to exist. Close parentheses. So we need to find balance. Balance between the

(04:15):
individual's need to feel a sense of freedom versus the need to create an organization that is, well,
organized. But you already knew that, right? What we want to sharpen is that this point,
where organizational bureaucracy meets the individual's sense of freedom,
is the point where responsibility can develop. Let us explain. Think of a completely imaginary

(04:40):
situation that never happened. A person goes shopping at the supermarket with a tidy list
of products he received at home. Among other things, cucumbers and tomatoes appear on the list,
so he buys cucumbers and tomatoes. When he returns home, he is asked where the onions are.
At this stage, he still imagines that the fact that onions were not on the list will stand in

(05:04):
his favor. And of course, when he clings to this excuse, he is immediately asked,
do we need to tell you onions? Yes, it turns out that onions are obvious,
as we said an event that never happened to us. What's the moral? When we reduce our degrees
of freedom, the message we absorb is that we are released from responsibility. Just like that person

(05:27):
who received a detailed shopping list and didn't feel the need to use his head and check what else
was missing at home. Similarly, in your organizations, the thicker the bureaucratic layer,
the more the employee's sense of responsibility erodes. And conversely, the more freedom employees
have to choose what and how to do their work, the greater their sense of responsibility will grow.

(05:53):
Which is interesting because for us, great freedom is usually associated with release
from responsibility, not with increasing it. Let us share an example from our consulting work.
We once worked with a biotech startup where the research team was drowning in approval processes.
Every experiment required sign-offs from three different committees. Detailed protocols had

(06:16):
to be submitted weeks in advance, and any deviation from the plan required starting the
approval process over again. The researchers had become so focused on following procedures
that they stopped thinking critically about their experiments. When we helped them streamline the
process and gave researchers more autonomy to adapt their methods in real time, something

(06:39):
remarkable happened. Not only did productivity increase, but the quality of their scientific
thinking improved dramatically. They began taking ownership of their research in ways that no
procedure manual could have mandated. And another point, it's important that we be alert to the
fact that organizational bureaucracy allows us to hide behind it and live in peace with norms

(07:04):
we're not willing to admit to. It releases employees from taking responsibility for their
decisions and actions because, well, that's the procedure. And with a hand on our heart,
does your organization really need all its bureaucratic mechanisms? Do they really serve
the organization? We saw this play out in a pharmaceutical company we worked with,

(07:27):
where the software development team was spending more time documenting their work
than actually coding. Every feature required extensive documentation, multiple review cycles,
and approval from stakeholders who often didn't understand the technical details.
The developers had become order takers rather than problem solvers,

(07:49):
when the company restructured to give development teams more autonomy to make technical decisions
within clear business constraints. Not only did delivery speed improve, but the developers began
proactively identifying and solving problems they previously would have escalated up the chain.
The reduction in bureaucratic overhead freed them to take genuine ownership of their products.

(08:14):
Could it be that we can inject more freedom into your system? This, of course, means that you'll
need to trust people. Because if there's freedom, it means they have choices over which you have no
control. But, and this is the point we want to establish, organizational bureaucracy produces
desired results in the short term, but it may suppress responsibility and creativity in the

(08:36):
long term. And this is the real dilemma. How much are you willing to pay the price for annoying
employee choices in the short term in order to get more engaged and responsible employees in the
future? The thing is, you're not alone in this dilemma. We simply recommend having this dialogue
with the employees themselves. You might be surprised by how little organizational bureaucracy

(09:01):
you'll need to remove to get a higher sense of freedom and responsibility among employees.
You're welcome to try it at home.
And that brings us to the end of today's podcast, where we explored how the historical shift from
hunter-gatherers to agriculture mirrors today's quest for freedom from bureaucratic constraints,

(09:26):
highlighting the importance of trust and dialogue in balancing organizational needs with employee
autonomy. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share this episode with your friends and colleagues,
so they can also stay updated on the latest news and gain powerful insights. Stay tuned for more updates.