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Study: People Want Power Because They Want Autonomy
- Semiapies 11y ago"Mostly", because quite a few people still just want control over others. And someone striving for "autonomy" through power still just wants to make you a tool for achieving their autonomy.
- pink_dinner 11y agoThis is why I started my own company: So nobody could tell me what to do. It's not really even about the money.
- x5n1 11y agoThat's the irony, one wants more autonomy, one usually ends up getting less starting a business.
- jabgrabdthrow 11y agoSounds like a specific failure of the "you" in your statement and not a general criticism of startups as a path to autonomy =]]
- x5n1 11y agosorry 3rd person you, changed it to one.
- mmatants 11y agoWorking independently definitely does not save one from BS and playing by the rules. However, I think the main distinction is that it feels less "personal". In a poorly-run hierarchy, having a manager means playing along for someone else more powerful, playing along with their personal politic, etc. That can be very distracting and exhausting, because for less-adequate managers it involves a lot of mental effort. And, importantly, it feels very person-centred rather than craft- or value-centred. Contrast that with freelance work: yes, clients can be very difficult to deal with, and in fact may require more "high touch" interaction. However, at that stage it is just a social contract, customer service, explicitly outlined interaction. And the relationship is transactional from the outset, there is a clear value focus. Plus, one could theoretically fire their client and move on (although that is not always realistic). As another comparison, let's look at a trades job in a highly unionized company: it can actually be quite liberating, because promotion and career track are again detached from specific personal impressions and set to a highly regulated and enforced schedule. People feel empowered, because it is a shield of sorts (albeit one that comes with costs as well).
- meric 11y agoSo in poorly run companies, you're selling a style of personal interaction rather than your ability to create value. I'm guessing in poorly run companies the company must resort to over paying for talent, (otherwise they can switch to better managed companies easily) and that premium could be selling the compliance to be poorly managed.
- anon987 11y agoMy view has been that someone always works for someone else. Even the most powerful board members answer to shareholders and entrepreneurs answer to their customers - lest they go out of business. Tell me about why you don't think you have to answer to your customers.
- jjn2009 11y agoEven when running a business I don't think you necessarily have to answer to customers, and you are certainly not forced to answer to shareholders or board members if the company is not structured in such a way to necessitate that. The only one or thing you absolutely have to answer to is the market, people can complain all they want about whatever they want, but so long as there are people who will open their wallet you really don't need to pay attention. This is completely different from typical boss-employee relationships, you're solving a problem in an autonomous fashion not following orders.
- timrpeterson 11y agoSo how does customers!=market
- Spooky23 11y agoAs long as the market > 1, you can always fire a customer.
- christiangenco 11y agoAhh yes, this is a thought I've been struggling with for a while - thank you for the mental clarification.
- eru 11y agoOf course, employees can also always fire their boss, as long as there's another employer waiting.
- robertcarter 11y agoReminds me of a Jimmy Carr joke: "I was in a taxi when the driver said 'I love my job! I'm my own boss and nobody tells me what to do!'. I said 'Great. Now take a left here!' "
- bduerst 11y ago"Small business owners will work 60 hours a week so they don't have to work 40 hours for someone else." is the quote I'm reminded of.
- qb45 11y agoCustomer isn't the same as boss. When doing something a customer asks for, you are doing something for someone's benefit (usually...). When doing something the boss asks for, well, you may never know whether it makes any sense to anybody at all if the company sufficiently detaches employees from the results of their work. There are places where you just feel like you are wasting time for nothing. Besides that, you can always (but not too often ;)) tell some particularly annoying customer to leave and pick up another one.
- enraged_camel 11y agoWhile you have more autonomy in some ways, you have less autonomy in others. Instead of a boss, you have clients you need to satisfy if you want to remain in business. And not everyone can be picky when it comes to clients, especially in a competitive market.
- danharaj 11y agoAs a shill for libertarian socialism, i am obviously glad to see controlled experiments that validate my prejudices about human nature. I switched jobs a few months ago from a steady job with good benefits to a less steady job with no benefits because it gave me far more autonomy and independence. I know many people who are very ambitious and want to be their own bosses: few of them want to rule others. In fact, of the bosses i know, all of them are frustrated by having to order and direct people. There is one pattern of thought that i think is missed by this experiment, but another one could just as well measure it too and i hope someone decides to: it's easier to order people to do what you think is right than it is to convince them that you are right. I think under circumstances where a person feels frustrated that their point of view isn't being validated by others they will have a greater tendency towards authoritarian power as opposed to autonomous power. Certainly, how many of us have gone through the phase of growing up where we think that if everyone just listened to us and did what we said, everyone would be better off? I think well intentioned paternalism is a greater cause for authoritarian desires than narcissism and ego validation.
- mercurialshark 11y ago"I think well intentioned paternalism is a greater cause for authoritarian desires than narcissism and ego validation." This, absolutely.
- smartscience 11y agoLest we forget, that well-intentioned paternalism is sometimes entirely on target: on Reddit at the moment there's a link 'Engineer Who Blamed Himself For Not Stopping Challenger Launch Dies' http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/challenger-engineer-bob-ebeling-dies_us_56f09f3be4b09bf44a9e41f2 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/challenger-engineer-bob-...
- gph 11y agoYou're really stretching the definition of paternalism with that one.
- jessaustin 11y ago
- marcus_holmes 11y agoNow all we need is a couple of independent researchers to replicate these conclusions to verify them and we might have learned something. I get really sceptical about these social sciences studies, especially after the recent round of replication attempts that failed.
- djsumdog 11y agoSame here, especially when the study surveys ordinary workers. People who run larger companies and banks typically score higher on the psychopathy scale (see the documentary "I am Fishhead"). Just because individuals may desire autonomy doesn't mean those type of people make it into leadership roles.
- groby_b 11y agoWait, what? You base your argument for disagreeing with the study on a documentary? You're aware that as bad as the standards for social sciences are, they still run circles around the standards for documentaries, right? And you're aware that the core part of that documentary is based on an (AFAIK) unreproduced study on psychopathy - by somebody who likely has a vested interest in psychopathy being a problem. (Robert Hare - see www.hare.org) I'm all for questioning the accuracy of studies, but I'd hope we'd use somewhat higher standards than that.
- choxi 11y agoI completely agree, and I'm glad someone's on this thread reminding everyone about the terrible state that social science research is in. Human beings are complicated and difficult to study, so I can appreciate the challenge that social science researchers have in front of them. But, propagating conclusions from a field of research that has a 33% reproducibility rate is just negligent journalism. It's not true just because it's in one study and it matches our intuition or something we read in a Malcolm Gladwell book. 1. Over half of psychology studies fail reproducibility test. http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-fail-reproducibility-test-1.18248 http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-f...
- jhwhite 11y agoThis is a really cool article that goes really well with Daniel Pink's book Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. Pink says that people need 3 things to truly feel motivated at work. Mastery, Autonomy, and Purpose. That seems to be based on self-determination theory mentioned in the article that autonomy, relatedness, and competence are human's basic psychological needs. The link (http://selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/2004_DeciVansteenkiste_SDTandBasicNeedSatisfaction.pdf http://selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/2004_DeciVa...) about self-determination takes you to a paper that references a researcher, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He has done a lot of research on optimal experience and has written a great book about it called Flow.
- ryanobjc 11y agoI think Pink was making a even stronger statement than you give him credit for. His statement in the book is that traditional methods of improving performance -- more pay for more work -- just doesn't work for tasks that require problem solving. In fact, counter-intuitively, experiments have demonstrated lower performance when paid to accomplish problem solving tasks. What Pink outlines is that to improve performance on problem solving tasks (including creative tasks) you have to provide people with Purpose, Mastery and Autonomy. The latter thing is often missing from most managerial textbooks since most managerial textbooks seem to have been written for industrial workers where precise control is emphasized. This totally backfires for IT jobs (and other types of jobs), and everyone has seen those disasters.
- chrisweekly 11y agoThe ~10 minute RSA Animate video for "Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us" is terrific: http://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc http://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc
- digi_owl 11y agoNo surprised there, as the MBA is basically a generic codification of what goes on in a widget factory.
- danieltillett 11y ago
- cylinder 11y agoThis is what has been bothering me all day / week and just before I clicked this. I cannot stand being micromanaged. I'm being driven crazy by it now, and it makes me want to go back to entrepreneurship.
- nefitty 11y agoMicromanagement is so corrosive to my motivation. I've worked retail for a long time, and it seems that managers with that tendency are usually pushed out. Telling people how to do Every. Single. Little. Thing. is the surest way to foment dissent and resentment. I'm tired of the inconsistency of the skill of people with authority over me, so am now fully pursuing an entrepreneurial lifestyle. Freedom, autonomy, I suddenly realize, are paramount to my contentment.
- danieltillett 11y agoCan I ask you a question. Is your boss able to (in practice) fire you? I have been a manager in situations where I could fire at will and others where I had no ability to fire. When I could fire I could just explain to my reports what needed to be done and leave them to get on with - when I couldn't fire the only way to get the work done was by micromanaging. I hated every moment of micromanaging, but there was no other way to get done what had to be done. Responsibility without power is a nightmare.
- gozur88 11y agoSo true. I had a job like that. It's a recipe for an ulcer.
- gregpilling 11y agoBOSS::Make those sales numbers! You have 12 dealers in that territory who should be feeding you leads! ME(1997)::Uh, boss about that. Those 12 dealers hate my program because they get 10% commission instead of 30% commission like they usually do. They actively work against me! Instead of feeding me leads, they are trying to sell competitors product because they make more money!! They hate my program! They make less money! BOSS:: (hits loop phase of discussion) You have 12 dealers in that territory who should be feeding you leads! Make those sales numbers or your fired! ME:: well, shit. <proceeds to make sales numbers by not telling dealers anything> When money fell from the sky, dealers didn't seem to care if it was 10% or 30% money because it showed up like free money. 0 effort for them. It was hell working with a group that not only I couldn't fire, the corporation could not even discipline them. They were independent dealers. I could make a sale, and they could refuse to process it (happened a few times). In those cases it was then a no-sale. I had to sell the customer and the dealer. Or do the deal without the dealer knowing about it until they received the check. After a year of free money, the worst dealer became the best dealer. He had been around 30 years, a grumpy old codger who was king of his area and all his customers trusted him 100%. His change in opinion (in his area alone) was worth about $25,000 a year in commissions in 1998. Thanks again Bob! I vowed to myself to never get in a position where I had all the responsibility to make something happen, but none of the authority to make it happen. That vow has kept me out of some situations, and whenever I break it is when I get miserable again. Then I re-vow ...
- sridca 11y agoMy feeling is that it is impossible to achieve autonomy in the workplace for no other reason than the fact that the factors for what you end up doing in day-to-day job is, ultimately (if not immediately), dictated by the investors of the company. Essentially I am exchanging my skills, expertise and time for money.
- troels 11y agoIt is not a law of nature that companies need have investors.
- danieltillett 11y agoEven workers cooperatives have investors (the workers themselves). Unless you have a business with no capital requirements then you must have investors.
- im3w1l 11y agoBootstrapping (or simply being rich) is a thing.
- danieltillett 11y agoWhen bootstrapping or being rich then you are the investor :)
- im3w1l 11y agoSure but we are talking about this in the context of being autonomous. So while you could say that you yourself are the investor, it ultimately doesn't matter for the overall argument.
- danieltillett 11y agoI was just responding to the claim that it is not a law of nature that companies have investors - in fact it is :)
- kijin 11y agoI don't think the distinction between autonomy and influence/power is so clear-cut in practice. The article defines autonomy as the absence of unwanted influence. But in a human society, unwanted influence is not something you can simply opt out of. Having autonomy without isolating yourself from the rest of the society means having at least some degree of influence over those who would like to influence you in unwanted ways. As long as there are people out there (politicians, marketers, burglars, terrorists, etc.) who are trying their damnedest to influence you, the only way you can achieve autonomy is to be able to tell them to get the fuck off your lawn. Sometimes you need to push people physically off your lawn. Sometimes you need to kill them, because they would kill you if you don't. An autonomous person without effective power will quickly cease to be autonomous. So autonomy is just another form of power. Some might even say that everything is power, and it's not just empty rhetoric.
- digi_owl 11y agoMakes me think of something i ran into about the freedom concept that was bouncing around at the time of the American revolution (and thus inspiring and influencing the founding fathers). I think it boiled down to freedom being the absence of coercion in any form.
- noam87 11y ago> To be free in an age like ours, one must be in a position of authority. That in itself would be enough to make me ambitious. (Ernest Renan)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- graycat 11y agoThe classic explanation is from E. Fromm, The Art of Loving with, to paraphrase, "For humans the fundamental problem of life is getting a feeling of security in the face of the anxiety from our realization that alone we are vulnerable to the hostile forces of nature and society." rough quote from memory. So, alone we feel vulnerable. So, we want security in the face of that vulnerability. Notably, Fromm does not say that money or power will give that feeling of security and, instead, claims that the first recommended solution is a good romantic relationship, that is, with "knowledge, caring, respect, and responsiveness" where the knowledge means the couple readily exchanges knowledge of themselves. Sure, one can try to use autonomy and self-sufficiency, and those via, say, money and/or power to get the feeling of security. But if only by omission, Fromm is saying that being so alone won't work well.
- zappo2938 11y ago+1 for Erich Fromm! My entire concept of office politics is based on a work by Fromm, Escape From Freedom. His Premise in the book is that people don't want to have to make decisions or be responsible, that they would rather have other people make decisions for them. He makes a point there there is a relationship, like a ratio, between being responsible and freedom. People would gladly give up freedom over being responsible.
- graycat 11y agoVery nice!
- fallingfrog 11y agoThis is insightful! Maybe you could say that people seek to maximize freedom (potential upside) while minimizing responsibility (potential downside)?
- Delmania 11y agoThis is something I struggle with. A part of me just wants to put my brain on autopilot and simply let my manager tell me what to do. That usually doesn't end well for me. However, I realize that people who want less responsibility and make no decisions are looking for a sense of stability and security in their lives. They want to wake up each morning, go to work, come home, and get paid on a regular basis. They want the regular paycheck. The irony of this, of course, is that this course of action is no less risky than entrepreneurship, because, at a moment's notice, your employer could fire you and destroy the illusion, even if you've worked over a decade for them. No matter what path you take in life, you need to own it. The days of working for a company for a few decades following a defined path were brief.
- codeonfire 11y agoThis is obvious in the workplace. Here are some of the things that lack of power/autonomy will lead to: - Being forced to do work assigned to someone else. - Being forced to do work for which someone else will receive credit or compensation - Being forced to appear as though under someone else's control (other than direct manager) - Being forced to do the more dangerous, risky, difficult, or thankless work - Being forced to do work far below one's qualifications - Being forced to take over failed projects or projects that have already been rejected by upper management.
- ux-app 11y ago> Being forced to do work for which someone else will receive credit or compensation I have a severely low level of tolerance for this. My first team leader at my first job as a code monkey blatantly took credit for a huge improvement I made to one of the company's long standing processes. It soon became apparent that climbing the corporate ladder meant climbing over the backs of others. I quit 2 weeks later and never returned to a cubicle. Autonomy is king. Without it, I personally cannot function.
- erikb 11y agoAnd how do you achieve autonomy if not via taking power? I mean you can work as a contractor, but the game is the same. You either make low pay, or work for someone else, or have the power to govern other people's agenda.
- feelix 11y agoPersonally I made some websites and started selling my apps from then. I quickly started making more than most salaried jobs and get complete control without having to be horrible to anybody. I don't understand why more people don't do it.
- erikb 11y agoThat actually sounds like a good plan!
- Aloha 11y agoI don't mean to be glib - but they needed a study for this? I think this is one of the primary reasons people have chased power for millennia - either to have control over themselves, change the world they live in, or lord over (seek retribution) those who've wronged (done arbitrary things to) them (perceived or otherwise).
- qq66 11y agoYou just listed three things, and the study is suggesting that it's the first, not the second two.
- tdeck 11y agoI remember seeing a talk a while back where the presenter was attempting to define the utility function that characterizes intelligent agents. His thesis was that an intelligent agent would work to maximize, up to some event horizon, its number of possible courses of action. This reminded me of that talk - money, power, etc... are all ways to increase one's freedom of choice and thus autonomy.
- Jedd 11y agoIs this really the results of a new study? I'm sure I was reading results of studies > 10 years ago, about stress levels of people within some number of large organisations, and finding people towards the top of the hierarchy were less stressed than those at the bottom. It was possibly speculative, though I'm sure I recall they'd confirmed it somehow, that it was due to people towards the bottom of an organisational structure had far less control over what their day or week looked like, and how they could plan out their tasks, than those at the top.
- erikb 11y agoWell, it's different things at work, right? Yes on one side people want autonomy. This very much so applies to many developers. But power is actually also exciting, for some people even sexual. Why do I think that? Well, computer games and porn for instance. In both you already get your agenda. But there are games and porn that gives you explicitely power over another (virtual) person. And people still like that, when they already have power over themselves.
- linhchi 11y agoIt's like I'm motivated to work like crazy until the point I can afford to be nothing.
- PaulHoule 11y ago"If I was black, and I lived here I'd want to be a big man in the FBI Or the CIA. But as I'm not, And as I'm free, white and 21 I don't need more power than I've got... Except sometimes, when I'm broke"
- PaulHoule 11y ago"If I was black, and I lived here I'd want to be a big man in the FBI Or the CIA. But as I'm not, And as I'm free, white and 21 I don't need more power than I've got... Except sometimes, when I'm broke"
- daodedickinson 11y agoMan, I never got to BLARP as an undergrad. I feel so left out.
- jschwartzi 11y agoI've been BLARPing since I graduated.