Seth Godin has a wonderful post today entitled "Headroom" in which he states, "The only thing worse than being able to say, "my boss won't let me," is having to acknowledge, "my boss will let me."

It's a great point.

Now what if, as a manager or leader in your organization, you told people your default managerial position was that you were granting them full authority to act. In other words, your expectation was that they were there to get things done.

The difference is that instead of people coming to you to ask for permission to do things (and thus you act as a centurion), you redesign your position to facilitate the actions your team has already initiated.  

It is the difference between playing defense and going on the offensive. 

In this era of accelerating change, I think there is really only one way to go.

If you haven't already changed your default setting from permission to action, it's time.