Control freaks? Not us.

When I began my first real job about twenty years ago I was pressganged into attending all sorts of training courses, most of them long forgotten.

A memorable lesson I recall, also later publicised by Tom Peters, continues to underpin my management philosophy.

An experiment was conducted in which two groups of adults worked on complex puzzles. Each group was exposed to loud noise. One group had no control over the noise. The second group was given an 'off' switch to stop the noise, but its members were asked not to use it unless they truly had to. The result was that the group with the off switch performed significantly better in the puzzles and, the revelation, they never used the off switch.

The moral here is that people who are given greater control over their own destiny perform better.

The best managers have learned to liberate their staff.