Imagine if you could unlock your team’s true potential—not by commanding every move or letting them run wild, but by finding the perfect balance between guidance and independence.
This is the secret to empowering teams to reach new heights. Let’s dive into how you can master this delicate balance and inspire transformative success.
How do you unlock the full potential of a team? Is it through complete freedom or by enforcing strict control?
The answer lies in finding a delicate balance. Let me show you how embracing both autonomy and structure can lead to transformative success.
Or, what a sandwich can teach us about project management.
I have a deep love for coaching, guiding teams, and supporting organizations. There is nothing quite like the satisfaction of seeing individuals and teams make significant, transformative progress. I enjoy the amazing results, but I also love the journey—the process of change itself.
Almost every time I run a training or coach a team, when discussing the importance of empowering self-organizing teams, I face the same passionate objections:
“Since when do we not need a manager?” “Who will make the decisions?” “Development isn’t a democracy!” “We’re not in a kibbutz, and kibbutzim have proven they don’t work!” “You can’t break the rules!”
And so on.
Usually, I sit back and enjoy the emotional outburst. Firstly, because it means I’ve awakened those who were previously disengaged. And secondly, because it shows that people are open to receiving new insights.
This is the moment when I start with a personal story:
“We have five kids within a four-year age range—three births between my beloved wife and me.
Early on, my amazing wife invented her own version of Agile. As always, necessity was the mother of invention.
In our case, it was the need to have breakfast delivered to her in bed—preferably with a croissant.
But how could we achieve that while also getting the kids ready for school: organizing their supplies, clothes, and, of course, their sandwiches?
Thus, the first self-organizing team of the Deutsch Family Inc. was born. From first grade, our children learned that they were responsible for three key ‘features’: preparing their school supplies, choosing their clothes, and making their sandwiches.
It was a huge success. The kids prepared their supplies just as well as I could (I was never good at figuring out which notebook was needed for Hebrew and whether it should be a folder or a book for mathematics—that whole domain is a kind of voodoo for me). When it came to clothing, yes, sometimes they wore T-shirts in winter or sweatshirts in summer, but after a few retrospectives, they dramatically improved their decision-making.
The biggest drama was around the sandwiches. We had to deal with social protests—kids complaining that they had to make their own sandwiches while all their friends’ parents did it for them. We didn’t negotiate and prepared for a prolonged struggle. But a few days later, the kids came home beaming, saying that all their friends were jealous. Their friends’ parents decided what to spread on the bread, while at Deutsch Family Inc., the team was free to choose whatever they wanted.
So what’s better—democracy or autocracy?
Business isn’t a democracy, and we’re not in a kibbutz. On the other hand, autocracy stifles creativity and limits a team’s ability to make breakthroughs.
So what’s the answer?
The truth is, it’s neither pure democracy nor autocracy. Our kids had the freedom—and the responsibility—that came with, choosing what to put on their sandwiches.
However, they could only choose from what was available in the house.
If there was no Nutella or anything else they wanted, but only cottage cheese or hummus, that’s what they used.
They decided between cottage cheese and hummus, but it was us, the parents, who set the framework within which they had that freedom.
Our children are now in their 20s and still haven’t discovered the secret of our ‘Manifluence’ (manipulative influence—a term I invented, which I’ll discuss in a future article).
They were free to put whatever they wanted in their sandwich, but only using what we as parents decided would be available at home.
If you reveal them the secret, I k..l you! See, you’re warned.
And that’s how it works with school sandwiches—and with team management.
We give our teams full autonomy, empowering them, giving them responsibility, and helping them reach their full potential. In doing so, we also free ourselves from the need for micromanagement. But all of this happens within a framework we, as Scrum Masters, Product Owners, or managers, define. We define the features, present the product backlog, set priorities, and outline the overall plan. This is what I want—it’s up to you, the team, to decide how to achieve it. You are free to choose and explore the best path forward. I am here to support, guide, and explain, but ultimately, you are responsible for the ‘how’ within the ‘what’ that I have defined.
And the only real question that remains is… hummus or cottage cheese?
