This may seem like a small difference, but in some companies employers can give inputs into the process, and in other companies they are just told to shut up… or maybe they are asked to voice their opinion, but then their opinion is completely ignored in a completely obvious manner.
I am talking here about autonomy, as one of the conditions for “flow”. Some workplaces have it, some don’t.
For example, as the boss of the computer game company, I could be micromanaging my employees and on a random whim override their best work with my half-baked ideas for no good reason… or I could be not doing this. Like, I make the decision about whether we are making a first-person shooter or a turn-based strategy, but my graphic people decide how long teeth will the ogres in the game have, because that is their competence.
The crushing form of power is if I start walking around, ask my graphic people to show me the pictures they made, and (despite having zero graphical talent) tell them to make this or that random change, throwing their ideas out of the window, wasting a lot of their work, ruining the consistency of the style, etc., simply because I am the boss and I can show them how little their opinions, skill, and lifelong experience matter in face of the power structure.
(Is this similar to what you called “rubbing the power in people’s faces”, or did you imagine something completely different?)
Hmmm… is it sure autonomy is a condition for that? It seems to me Zen monks train for something like the flow all the time and they don’t have much of it.
Also, there is the personal kind of autonomy of doing your own work without others bothering you, and the democratic kind of autonomy when having input into what the company as a whole does, the project as a whole, and I think this second cannot really be relevant to it → the boss will not distrupt flow if he makes all those decisions alone, and leaves autonomy for people to work out the details in the bits and pieces they work with.
No, I meant something far worse than that by rubbing. Intimidation, status symbols, belittling, inequal titles (i.e. calling employees on first name terms but expect to be called back on surname terms) and so on. But yes, this also sounds kinda bad too. This is only bad if employees care about their work and not working just because they must. The other kind of bad is always bad.
This may seem like a small difference, but in some companies employers can give inputs into the process, and in other companies they are just told to shut up… or maybe they are asked to voice their opinion, but then their opinion is completely ignored in a completely obvious manner.
I am talking here about autonomy, as one of the conditions for “flow”. Some workplaces have it, some don’t.
For example, as the boss of the computer game company, I could be micromanaging my employees and on a random whim override their best work with my half-baked ideas for no good reason… or I could be not doing this. Like, I make the decision about whether we are making a first-person shooter or a turn-based strategy, but my graphic people decide how long teeth will the ogres in the game have, because that is their competence.
The crushing form of power is if I start walking around, ask my graphic people to show me the pictures they made, and (despite having zero graphical talent) tell them to make this or that random change, throwing their ideas out of the window, wasting a lot of their work, ruining the consistency of the style, etc., simply because I am the boss and I can show them how little their opinions, skill, and lifelong experience matter in face of the power structure.
(Is this similar to what you called “rubbing the power in people’s faces”, or did you imagine something completely different?)
Hmmm… is it sure autonomy is a condition for that? It seems to me Zen monks train for something like the flow all the time and they don’t have much of it.
Also, there is the personal kind of autonomy of doing your own work without others bothering you, and the democratic kind of autonomy when having input into what the company as a whole does, the project as a whole, and I think this second cannot really be relevant to it → the boss will not distrupt flow if he makes all those decisions alone, and leaves autonomy for people to work out the details in the bits and pieces they work with.
No, I meant something far worse than that by rubbing. Intimidation, status symbols, belittling, inequal titles (i.e. calling employees on first name terms but expect to be called back on surname terms) and so on. But yes, this also sounds kinda bad too. This is only bad if employees care about their work and not working just because they must. The other kind of bad is always bad.