Work culture 2: GTD and Finnish laissez-faire

In high school psychology books, they told about 3 management style:

• Hierarchical:The boss tells you what to do.


• Democratic:Workers discuss how to reach the goal of the team. Boss decides in absence of consensus and enforces consensus.


• Laissez-faire:Boss doesn't interfere as long as things go on.

In Finland I've seen many projects run in laissez-faire mode. The boss gives a high-level goal, and his underlings tell how their next actions help reach the goal. As long as the boss sees progress instead of slack, he doesn't interfere. There are two scenarios where this is especially common.

Firstly, trainees who do demos or tools are often left to their own devices. Especially if you are second year and know the habits of the house, the order can well be "Build a graphical user interface. Write a design document on how you would do that." When you submit the design document, you are told to implement it.

Secondly, in two late projects with a tight deadline the project was split into a well-run core and laissez-faire run perimeter. I was placed to the perimeter. The core employees had enough challenge doing their own work, and they appreciated that support tasks just got done and they could put full attention to the stuff that matters.

Laissez-faire requires that people are college educated, because that's pretty much the only environment for masses to learn laissez-faire. Also, people who pass the college filter tend to have enough future time orientation to understand the link between freedom and personal responsiblity, and to choose freedom and responsibility over slacking when they can.

When I first met laissez-faire, I found it confusing. I had just arrived from high school and army and a family where parents had unquestioned authority. I was unsure about myself and what was expected from me, and found lack of direct negative feedback (or any feedback) to be distrubing. Only after reading GTD I learned to love laissez-faire. With GTD, all you need is the high-level goal and you can actionalize the rest yourself. If you are unsure, just ask if the next actions on your list are what they should be. Running GTD is also enough to fill all reasonable productivity expectations that others pile on me.