Doug Kirkpatrick Leadership

Thought Leader Doug Kirkpatrick Wants People to Have Their Lives Back at Work

Doug Kirkpatrick wants to give people in the workplace their lives back.”

While the statement may sound bold, Kirkpatrick, an organizational environment expert, makes a strong argument against traditional work structures and highlights the damages of blind conformity in his new book “Beyond Empowerment: The Age of the Self-Managed Organization.”

Self-management, the respected author and speaker explained, is the pathway to more productive and positive companies. The era of hierarchical management’s reign is coming to a close.

As a long-time business and organizational observer, Kirkpatrick’s perspective is one that has developed over decades.

However, despite

Realizing management is something that everyone does all the time in their personal lives and that many excel at complex and life-altering decisions in that context, the idea of shifting to independence from command authority gained credence.

“People were deciding who to date... where to live, whether to buy a car...whether to have children,” he said. “They were already making these life-changing decisions without a boss.”

When Kirkpatrick joined Rufer to begin a new company, Morning Star, the opportunity arose to apply what they’d learned in a fresh environment.

In the early days of Morning Star, Rufer called a meeting and presented the team with a proposal for a new form of organizational structure, which they carefully discussed. Everything changed that day.

“When we walked out into the night air we were a self-managed organization,” Kirkpatrick said.

A self-managed company, he explained, acknowledges that everyone is already a manager and to the degree individuals are knowledgeable about what to do and how to do it, they should be able to manage

Morning Star uses the term colleagues.

“We consider everyone to be a professional regardless of what he or she does, whether they 're making critical operating decisions, cleaning bathrooms or sorting tomatoes” he said. “They have the freedom and autonomy to do their best work, to acquire resources, to build relationships, to innovate, to lead. People are happier when they have agency and autonomy.”

Inspired by the Morning Star, Kirkpatrick decided to author a book about the experience and effectiveness of self-management.

“I consider the book to be for organizational leaders seeking a better way to define their organizations and to create higher levels of engagement, elevate business performance, shrink the costly bureaucracy, and do the right thing by giving people their lives back at work.

International business leaders have translated and published the book in Chinese and German.

The University of Phoenix and well-known online company Zappos have already purchased the book in bulk, and University of Phoenix business unit leader Stephenie Gloden even transformed her part of the