Return-to-office edicts, belt-tightening, and burnout anxieties have pulled many leaders back to familiar control levers. Yet the work itself has become more interdependent and less predictable. That is the tension. If command and control promises reliable execution, what runs complex work without burning people out or bogging them in meetings?
Self-management gets waved in as the answer or dismissed as chaos. Both reactions miss the practical question that matters. What should you measure if you try it?
Start with a clear definition
Self-management is not a vibe. It is a formal redistribution of authority that removes the boss–subordinate relationship and decentralizes decision rights across the organization in systematic ways (Lee and Edmondson, 2017). The theory also draws a boundary. Traditional hierarchy performs well for repeatable tasks in stable contexts. It struggles with nonroutine, cross-functional problem solving and can entrench status differences that stifle learning and growth (Lee and Edmondson, 2017). That does not prove self-management will outperform in every setting. It frames where to test it and what trade-offs to expect.
The public debate rarely keeps those nuances straight. When holacracy drew headlines a decade ago, many took sides as if it were salvation or folly. In 2016 Zappos was the largest company to adopt the system, and the conversation around it became polarized enough that even its practitioners urged a more balanced read of the real promise and risks (Bernstein, Bunch, Canner and Lee, 2016).
The well-being signal
One hard outcome should sit on every dashboard: whether autonomy at the system level actually sustains people. A recent multi-sample study validated separate scales for organizational self-management and for individual employee self-management, then tested how each related to engagement and burnout (Morikawa, Martela and Hakanen, 2025). Both types of self-management were positively related to work engagement and negatively related to burnout. The authors also found that job demands partly mediated these relationships, suggesting that the way work is designed and distributed matters for how autonomy translates into energy or exhaustion (Morikawa, Martela and Hakanen, 2025).
Note the caveat. This is correlational evidence drawn from two samples, one of 425 employees from multiple organizations and another that was nationally representative in Finland with 2,000 respondents. It does not establish causation. It does, however, challenge the common claim that removing hierarchy inevitably raises stress. If you are experimenting with self-management, treat engagement and burnout as leading indicators and design for them explicitly.
The cost of coordination
Autonomy does not remove the need to coordinate, it simply changes how you pay for it. Buurtzorg, a Dutch home-care organization, is the most studied example of scale without middle managers. As of January 2021 it had more than 900 self-managing teams with a maximum of 12 nurses per team, about 14,700 employees, two directors, and roughly 50 people in the back office. There are no middle managers or supervisors. The company supports about 950 teams with only 21 internal coaches, and those coaches have no formal authority and no responsibility for team productivity (Martela and Nandram, 2025).
What does that buy or cost? Earlier analyses reported overhead around 8 percent at Buurtzorg compared to a sector average of 25 percent in Dutch home care, a striking gap attributed to a KPMG assessment from around 2015. That number should not be read as current performance. It is a dated reference point that nevertheless illustrates the potential for leaner administrative layers in a well-designed self-managing system (Martela and Nandram, 2025). The same case also cautions against simplistic cost narratives. Buurtzorg’s cost per hour has been higher than peers, €54.47 versus €48.74, so lower overhead does not automatically translate into lower unit prices (Martela and Nandram, 2025).
The authors are explicit about boundary conditions. This model works best where interdependence between teams is low, frontline professionals are both competent and motivated, and services can be delivered in relatively local loops that reduce cross-team complexity (Martela and Nandram, 2025). Those conditions, not slogans, determine whether the coordination burden is manageable without a managerial middle.
Avoid the template trap
The second dashboard lesson is cultural, not numeric. Templates promise speed. They often deliver revolt. At Zappos, the push for full holacracy came with a 2015 ultimatum from the CEO that employees should opt in or take a buyout. Eighteen percent chose to leave. Within two years the company had shifted to an internal market model in which teams operated with their own P&Ls and transacted with one another, a move motivated by what leaders called serious business-metric challenges and by criticism that holacracy was too inward focused. Managers returned and much of the system’s meeting cadence was dropped. The circular hierarchy remained mostly as an artifact (Groth, 2020). That is not an indictment of self-management. It is a reminder that structure must serve strategy and economics, not the other way around.
The balanced read urged in 2016 still stands. The largest adopters at the time were making a good-faith bid to escape the rigidity and status traps of hierarchy, and the authors argued for judging such experiments by their real operational gains rather than by rhetoric (Bernstein, Bunch, Canner and Lee, 2016). A decade on, the evidence suggests you should audit three things as you go: whether authority is genuinely redistributed in the work, whether coordination costs fall in ways that matter for your economics, and whether people’s energy is rising rather than draining away.
The practical read
If you are considering self-management, design like a CFO and a CHRO sitting at the same desk. From day one track engagement and burnout with validated instruments, then review them alongside hard coordination metrics such as span of control substitutes, coach-to-team ratios, and process cycle times. The Buurtzorg case shows that you can scale with almost no middle managers if you build lightweight support roles and keep cross-team interdependence in check. It also shows that lower overhead is not the same thing as lower prices, and that fit with work type is non-negotiable (Martela and Nandram, 2025).
Do not roll out a philosophy. Start where the Lee and Edmondson map suggests you have a shot: domains heavy on professional judgment and nonroutine problems, not high-volume, tightly coupled workflows (Lee and Edmondson, 2017). Borrow templates only to the extent that they help you codify decision rights, escalation paths, and peer accountability. The Zappos experience is the warning label on abrupt, system-wide mandates and on mistaking a branded method for a business model (Groth, 2020; Bernstein, Bunch, Canner and Lee, 2016).
Self-management is not a referendum on bosses. It is an operating choice with measurable outcomes. If your experiments lift engagement and reduce burnout while holding or improving the economics of coordination, keep going. If not, fix the design or stop. The ideology does not pay the bills. The metrics do.
Sources
- Lee and Edmondson (2017). Self-managing organizations: Exploring the limits of less-hierarchical organizing. Defines SMOs as formal, systematic redistribution of authority without boss–subordinate ties and maps where such designs fit. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191308517300059
- Bernstein, Bunch, Canner and Lee (2016). Beyond the Holacracy Hype. Reports that Zappos was the largest holacracy adopter at the time and argues for a balanced, evidence-based view of self-management experiments. https://hbr.org/2016/07/beyond-the-holacracy-hype
- Morikawa, Martela and Hakanen (2025). Self-management and employee well-being: validated scales, engagement and burnout. Finds both organizational and employee self-management correlate with higher engagement and lower burnout, with partial mediation by job demands. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23409444241307734
- Martela and Nandram (2025). Buurtzorg: scaling up an organization with hundreds of self-managing teams but no middle managers. Documents Buurtzorg’s scale without middle managers, dated overhead comparisons, higher hourly costs, and boundary conditions for when the model works. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41469-024-00184-y
- Groth (2020). Zappos has quietly backed away from holacracy. Details the 2015 ultimatum with 18% buyouts and the 2017 shift to an internal market model with managers reinstated. https://qz.com/work/1776841/zappos-has-quietly-backed-away-from-holacracy