Lessons from Office Space: Conditions for Empowerment, Part I
Uniforms, Flair, and Guardrails
Have you ever been on a team that was supposed to be “empowered”? Think back to that time. Was it what you hoped for or expected? Were you autonomous and actually able to set your priorities, or have a meaningful say in direction?
In theory, being empowered is paradise for individuals and outcomes. But in practice (outside the walled garden) it’s more of a purgatory. This gap between theory and practice leaves many teams and organizations feeling trapped between too much autonomy and too much oversight.
How do others manage this disconnect? Jeff Bezos had a surprising take on it: “If we wanted Amazon to be a place where builders can build, we needed to eliminate communication, not encourage it.” A counterintuitive point, but what he was getting at is that too much leadership input can stifle innovation. Builders need to be allowed to build.
Bezos emphasizes that reducing unnecessary oversight is critical for innovation. But there’s a second key ingredient: the ability to work distraction-free. Morgan Housel of Collab Fund takes this further, explaining that true autonomy comes from having the space to apply your expertise without constant interruption.
Tacking this idea on to Bezos’, empowering others is not about granting unlimited decision-making power. To operate with autonomy is to have a structured environment, kind of like a like a well-marked trail, with freedom to move, experiment, and build without constant oversight. Too much freedom without boundaries, and teams can get lost. Too many restrictions, and they struggle to move at all.
Think about a great teacher you had growing up. My guess is they didn’t micromanage every aspect of your learning process but they also didn’t leave you to figure everything out on your own. They set up the right structures (curriculum, feedback, guidance) while allowing flexibility for you to learn in your own way. That same balance of structure and autonomy is what makes empowerment work in any system, including teams.
This tension between freedom and structure has led to a fundamental misunderstanding of empowerment. It’s often interpreted as the need to remove all constraints, but in reality, it’s about designing the right ones. This is a big topic and I plan to share my thoughts on the conditions needed to empower people in a couple parts. This post focuses on shared practices.
The “Office Space” approach to shared practices
Bezos and Housel are great and all, but I’ve got a better example: the 1999 movie Office Space.
If you’ve seen it, you’ll remember the infamous ‘flair’ scene. Employees at Chotchkie’s restaurant are required to wear at minimum 15 pieces of flair (buttons, pins, etc.), but are encouraged to express themselves by wearing more. Some employees go to extremes—piling on 37 pieces to prove their enthusiasm.
It’s actually a great illustration of the components you need to empower teams: minimum expectations, individual flexibility, and implicit leadership pressures.
How this can work in practice
A couple years back I tried this approach with a team of product managers. Everyone had varying levels of experience, skills, and preferences and Office Space worked to make the concepts of practices, principles, and constraints more relatable. We defined our boundaries and autonomy around three categories:
The “Uniform” (things we all do):
Some things must be consistent across all teams. These are the foundational practices that provide clarity, efficiency, and alignment. “Uniform” doesn’t mean rigid rules, it means shared agreements that make collaboration easier. Having a baseline set of expectations acts as a common language across teams. Here are some examples from our working sessions:
For user stories: Use a consistent template for writing stories (e.g., “As a user, I want…”).
For presentations: Every quarterly update needs to review of Goals/OKRs to provide clarity on priorities.
For process consistency: Teams should use labels and epics sparingly and intentionally to promote small releasable stories and avoid clutter and irrelevant groupings.
The goal isn’t standardization here. Not everything needs to be identical. These aren’t bureaucratic rules or processes, they’re principles that enable execution and alignment.
Allow “Flair” (where to be flexible):
This is where teams and individuals can adapt based on what works best for them. While uniformity provides structure, flexibility allows for creativity, innovation, and ownership. Everyone has different natural strengths, styles, and preferences for how they work best. They should be given space to “express themselves” within the broader structure. This is where creating flexibility creates room for empowerment.
For user stories: Everyone can choose how much detail to include in their stories (some teams may prefer a highly detailed breakdown, others may keep them lightweight).
For presentations: The order of slides or how content is presented (e.g., narrative style vs. data-heavy approach) is variable.
For communication: Some teams prefer Slack standups, while others prefer daily video calls.
The amount of flexibility depends on the team’s maturity, working style, and needs. Some areas require more structure, while others can afford more adaptability.
Establish Guardrails (bounds to stay within):
Unlike rigid rules, guardrails exist to prevent chaos, misalignment, and inefficiency. Empowerment doesn’t mean “anything goes.” and these boundaries create focus, keep teams aligned, and prevent unnecessary backtracking, without stifling creativity.
For user stories: “T-shirt sizing” is not the same as story pointing—teams must separate estimation techniques.
For presentations: Updates need to focus on purpose over output (not a glorified status update).
For decision-making: Teams should ensure alignment with the broader strategy and not operate in a vacuum.
Guardrails aren’t meant to be restrictive—they protect autonomy by ensuring teams aren’t working at cross-purposes.
Why shared practices are table-stakes to conditions of empowerment
Even the most well-intentioned leaders struggle with this. An excellent and curious VP once asked me, “I have a pile of things my boss needs my team to build. I get we want to empower them, but what am I supposed to do? Let them decide everything?”
Empowerment is not just something given to teams. It requires thoughtful structure and reinforcing behaviors from everyone around them. If you seek to empower, you need to have a shared operating model that clearly sets expectations while leaving space for flexibility.
Shared practices done well set the stage for consistency, efficiency, and scalability. When teams use consistent practices, it reduces cognitive load and friction to collaboration. And when everyone acts based on a shared set of values and understanding, you get a culture of trust, reducing the amount of redundant conversations needed to explain your process or justify every decision ad nauseam. Then, as organizations grow, shared ways of working enable scaling without losing cohesion in culture, quality, or capability.
Shared practices set the foundation for autonomy. Without them, teams either get micromanaged or lost in ambiguity. However, practices alone aren’t enough. True empowerment isn’t just about how teams work—it’s also about what they work on.
If practices shape the how, the next dimension of empowerment is providing clarity on the what needed to make effective decisions. To build trust and autonomy, teams need to focus on the right work and achieve the right outcomes.
Empowering others means creating a unified vision and clear priorities and enabling a balance of focus across different types of work. That’s what we’ll explore in Part II: thinking about how teams use their time and focus as a condition for empowerment.