What Bali Traffic Madness Teaches Us About The Benefits Of Self-Management
Moving towards more humanity in organisations with no rules and less bureaucracy
Everyone who has been to Bali knows what Bali traffic is like: it is complete madness.
Motorbikes everywhere, zigzagging through traffic, going on pavements, at speed and loaded with up to 6 dogs, live chickens, plastic bags with gold fish, and people. Motorbikes are like moving vans with full size windows or couches tied to the back. They are taxis and family movers with a couple of adults, a baby, a toddler, three bags of shopping and a week’s laundry. They are even shops with toys piled up to about 2 meters high in inexplicable ways. Pushbikes fitted out with kitchens ring bells continuously and stop to serve people on the side of the road. Cars drive around at about 30km/hr, speeding up unexpectedly, driving over two lanes, veering far to the right (people drive on the left here) to go around the aforementioned ‘kitchen bike’, and often stopping randomly. And then there are the semi-stray dogs as an extra obstacle: lying on the street, wandering into the street or chasing another dog (or you!) down the street.
It is fair to say that when I ventured into traffic here with a scooter I was petrified. People come from the left and go first; when you turn opposite traffic may take the inside or the outside corner; the lone traffic police officer blows his whistle randomly and makes inexplicable arm movements. Just before the traffic light goes green, it goes orange and people honk in anticipation in case you were not aware you should go now. When you go slow or show indecisiveness, you loose your place in traffic and end up squeezed between a truck full of roosters and a small family on a scooter looking mildly amused at your panicked face. And you still have to navigate the millions of little streets. Oh, and don’t get me started on the monsoon … when torrential rain is added into the mix.
The “Aha moment”
On my way to a mountain retreat, as we are driving at great speed through tiny villages, I finally got the chance to ask a driver what the traffic rules are in Bali. He started laughing, and as he overtook a massive garbage truck, he said:
‘No rules. Only rule is no crash!’
To be honest, my first reaction was: this is crazy. Why wouldn’t they have traffic rules, this is so dangerous!
And then something dawned on me. Sure, it seems crazy and traffic looks like chaos to the untrained eye. But how many accidents had I seen? I definitely heard about foreigners being in accidents, but locals? Not that many. Given the madness on the road, the quality of vehicles, you would expect carnage on every corner … but there isn’t. Without traffic lights, traffic still seems to find its flow. Without give-way rules, everyone does get their turn. And what struck me even more, I had seen no road rage. It seemed to me that people cut each other off left, right and centre, and I would expect gesturing and yelling, but people seemed surprisingly relaxed. Calm even.
It made me wonder: by not creating any rules what people are left with is self-responsibility for being a safe driver, for not creating harm to others.
Maybe without imposed rules, people do not rely on something outside themselves to protect them from harm, they remain responsible themselves. And maybe that makes them more agile, more alert and more flexible drivers.
And also, when we don’t rely on rules to create our order, there is no frustration that comes with noticing that others don’t do it ‘the right’ or ‘agreed’ way.
More relaxed drivers and perhaps even safer trafffic because there are no traffic rules? While it seems like a paradox to my cultural or habitual thinking, it also appears to be true.
So how does this relate to organizations?
Increasingly we see organizations question whether hierarchy and rules are the best way of organizing: does it really create human-friendly, agile and creative organizations? And also, with the boom in online working during Covid, businesses are grappling with what it means to lead remotely when direct control and supervision is no longer an option. Both research and practice show that the old blueprint of hierarchical organizational design and control-focused managerial practices do not create the best outcomes for businesses or employees. Organisations that put trust in their people, have less rules and distribute power to those who actually do the work, are more agile, have less operational costs and are better able to innovate when faced with changing demands. In addition, we see an increase in employee wellbeing, employee growth and development, and employee retention when employees have more autonomy, have a voice and are able to self-express.
Interestingly, during my PhD research into exemplary purpose-driven organizations, I found that businesses that are truly committed to being kind, human-friendly and values-driven almost automatically move towards flatter organizational structures with more focus on self-management and empowerment, and less focus on rules and control. They also tend to adopt a concept of leadership that moves away from ‘management’ and looks more like a mentorship or coaching relationship with employees. Transparency and open book management, pre-approval practices and collective decision making on strategy and key appointments, are also part of this shift.
The benefits and reality of self-management in organizations with less rules and less hierarchy was also the topic of a recent conference I attended. The ‘no rules, corporate democracy’ maverick Richardo Semler from Semco posed an important question there:
Why would we treat capable adults, who make big and important decisions in their private lives, like adolescents in our organizations? Why are we imposing rules and are trying to control their behavior, instead of devolving power?
Similarly, Jos Blok, the inspirational founder and CEO of Buurtzorg, brought home the notion that bureaucracy is in tension with honoring our humanity.
The practical insights that Semler and Blok shared during these talks will be the subject of a different post, but for now, I am curious:
What benefits and challenges do you see from distributing power, and what changes do you see happening in the sphere?
P.s. In case you are interested:
After a year in Bali, I now drive my scooter with a massive dog and a full shopping bag on the front, a full-sized human on the back and my week’s laundry under my seat. Relaxed and smiling.
