Even the least autonomous team will be given authority to set task sequences for their project. I find it much more useful to talk specifically about which authorities you will or will not give to the team rather than to make broad pronouncements about autonomy and empowerment. There is simply very little information content in the statement that the team is autonomous, because it tells you very little about the detail of how decisions will get made. The book identifies about forty key decision areas in which you must choose whether the team or someone outside the team should have authority. As I mentioned earlier, the basic defect in the way most people manage risk is that they think our objective is to minimize risk.
Risk is viewed as bad.
An economist would take a different perspective. Any decision to take a risk is a bet on an uncertain future. The rationality of that bet depends on what the upside is, what the downside is, and the chance of winning. We only want people to stop placing stupid bets. The problem today is that most companies have very poor processes to make these decisions.