Innovation, Autonomy and Accountability: my talk to the UK Department of Media, Culture and Sport

I was asked to speak at the UK Department of Media, Culture and Sport in January. One thing that often comes up when you talk to people about autonomous organizations is the subject of accountability. This is something that we even discuss within Spotify, from time to time.

When talking to a government organization, especially one who is responsible for distributing funding for programs, like the DCMS, the concern around accountability is paramount. At the same time, governmental organizations are also looking to innovate to provide better services to their constituents.

My goal with this talk was to present the idea of how a governmental organization could innovate by using autonomous teams while maintaining accountability by picking good metrics to measure success of programs and measuring those metrics on an ongoing basis. This would allow the programs to have autonomous control of their work and innovate, while having a objective measurement of the value that they were returning.