The half we keep ignoring

Autonomy is the darling of the modern workplace culture. We speak of it reverently - ‘trust your people, give them freedom, let them fly.’ And yes, fine, that’s all good.

And yet, what’s quietly forgotten is that we are not solitary creatures quietly optimising ourselves in isolation. We are, fundamentally, shaped by those that we work with.

Heteronomy - the idea that we are governed, in part, by our obligations and relationships to others - isn't, as it’s often seen, a constraint on human potential. It is where human potential develops and lives.

The best teams I've worked with don't succeed because everyone enjoys unlimited autonomy. They succeed because people felt genuinely accountable to one another. Because the group's needs occasionally overrode individual preference. Because interdependence was treated as a feature of performance, not a flaw.

Autonomy without heteronomy produces brilliant individuals.

Heteronomy, held wisely, produces something far more interesting: people who actually need each other.

And that is where the real work happens and where the strongest, highest-performing cultures are built.