This article is day 31 of the 10X Advent Calendar.

This has been a year where society changed at an unprecedented pace, and we were confronted with enormous questions. I want to write about something I've been thinking about a great deal: autonomy.

What Autonomy Is

I expect autonomy from myself, my children, everyone who works at my company, and everyone I encounter. What I mean by "autonomy" is having a clear set of personal values.

That means being able to respect both your own values and the values of others.

It means sometimes complementing each other through those values, sometimes fighting over them.

And sometimes it means those values become a reason to question yourself.

Having your own values is what allows you to resist easy conformity, to become an active participant in society and community as a complement to others rather than a follower.

Autonomy is what makes us human; without it we're just human animals.

I find myself resonating with the argument by Miyadai and Noda that as AI, the metaverse, and robots proliferate, the distinction between being "human" and being "human-like" becomes more important than simply being "human." (Reference)

Reference: Social Systems Theory for Management Leaders — Structural Problems and Our Future

Put simply: "I'll do what I choose. You do what you like. Let's just not hurt anyone." That's the attitude of an autonomous individual.

What Blocks Autonomy

Most of what we're exposed to in today's society pulls us in exactly the opposite direction. Developing "a clear set of personal values" is genuinely hard.

Consider the society most of us live in:

• In most democracies, war has disappeared, and national identity keeps weakening
• Society is not something we trust to "respond when we need it"
• The information I see and the information you see are completely different
• We seek "likes," but no one on social media is actually there for you
• Opportunities to accomplish something through dialogue and dedication to others are scarce
• Meeting your basic needs alone is easy. Too easy. But the loneliness is real.

In this environment, it's no wonder that building something like "here is how I believe one ought to live" is so hard. Values are forged in autonomous communities — and those communities are getting harder to find.

In my own experience, the moments when my values were most sharpened were when I admired and tried to emulate autonomous individuals who were further along than I was.

Where Autonomy Begins

As a parent, the anxiety I feel is the difficulty of creating the conditions for my children to develop autonomy.

At the time of writing, none of my children are enrolled in any extracurricular activities. Programming, English, gymnastics — they tried a few things for a few months and didn't stick with any of them. My partner and I didn't force them to continue either. We could have installed skills, but we didn't believe these activities were sharpening their values.

The kind of experiences that sharpen values are hard to find on demand. You can't outsource them for a fee to someone else. In our household, I've come to realize that parents have to create those conditions in their relationship with their children.

Thinking back, I've felt this way since I was a teenager. I never stuck with any extracurricular activity either; in the third year of middle school, I quit cram school on my own. My mother was shocked and cried, but I felt the same way about cram school that I did about everything else.

The same skepticism carried into adulthood. I look at career development theory with mild detachment because most of the job market is essentially a "skills exchange." Career advice is filled with talk of acquiring and leveraging skills. The boom in adult education programs is one sign of this. But in terms of building personal values, how much do any of these actually contribute?

I'm not saying skills are useless or unimportant. Skills are valuable as a means of generating resources. But they only become meaningful when accumulated and exercised through some underlying value framework. Doesn't a collection of skills without a value framework become hollow?

"Become autonomous." I think this is the greatest challenge facing people today.

Two Kinds of Leadership That Companies Need

Shifting gears: in early 2017, I wrote that a company has two dimensions — as a capitalist player seeking profit, and as a community of people gathered together for a purpose.

My argument then was that returns should be prioritized. But I've revised that view. Today I believe the company-as-community dimension is more important than it was.

For a company to survive in capitalism, it needs profit. For that, a "managerial" leadership style — one that builds systems and knowledge structures, and uses alignment with social value to mobilize followers — is highly effective. Elon Musk's Twitter turnaround reveals a lot about "managerial" leadership.

But companies also have a community dimension, and the leadership needed there is the polar opposite.

"Community-style" leadership asks participants to be stakeholders, builds relationships outside the logic of systematic self-interest, and enables participants to facilitate each other. No one delegates responsibility. It's the kind of leadership that continuously improves the community itself.

In my experience, when I worked at an NPO engaging with local communities, the leadership required was this "community-style." I was supported at the time by the thinking of Ryo Yamazaki, a community designer whose work I highly recommend.

And a community has a precondition: all participants must be autonomous. A community demands autonomy of its members, and in turn, the community sharpens that autonomy.

By my own self-assessment, I'm stronger in "managerial" leadership and weaker in "community-style" leadership. And it's the weaker side that's relatively more needed right now.

For an Autonomous Company

Companies are no longer just profit machines. They're becoming places where people gather around a vision or mission, complement each other's strengths and weaknesses, and aim for a shared world. I believe that's true of 10X too.

The fact that I can run this company even though my weakness is what's needed right now is because I too am "one person who maximizes their strengths and is complemented by others."

In addition to being a profit-seeking startup, 10X is notable for genuinely trying to be an autonomous community where autonomous individuals can grow. That's perhaps the most striking thing about it.

10X's office is modest, without a kitchen, without superficial glamour. Feedback is direct. Anyone will hear you out anytime, and sometimes the right "person" to consult is a document. "I'll do what I believe is right for the company. You do what's right for you." That attitude is visibly present.

The company's systems are designed to amplify this, not suppress it. In today's world, that's genuinely rare.

I struggle with balancing managerial and community-style leadership. But looking across society, I find very few places I can recommend this highly.

Finally

Thank you for this year. 2022 was a year of welcoming the team growing from 45 to over 100 people, with so many new encounters. We continue to recruit actively, so I hope this glimpse into what 10X is like as a community resonates with someone. Check out 10X Careers — it's always being updated.

Looking forward to meeting many more people through this company in 2023.