Since quitting my job to escape poor management, I’ve moved into a curious mix of being half self-employed – where, oddly enough, I have both a manager (but more on that next time!) – and independence.

My employer is a small bike shop, which gives me an opportunity to look at the management differences between big-box stores and independent retailers.

The key distinctions are the level of responsibility an employee is given and the amount of trust they receive from their boss.

I’d wager that a mathematical boffin could invent, without too much effort, a formula that correlates pretty accurately the square footage of a store with the trust bestowed on its employees. It’s an inverse correlation. The bigger the store, the less faith is held in the rank and file.

At the bike shop, I regularly have to deal with customers and make decisions on my own – both my bosses work in what I like to call “real jobs”, as well as owning the shop. As a consequence, they aren’t available at a moment’s notice. While my executive role was daunting at first, after making a few of these calls I routinely meet with a “whatever you think is best” mantra from the bosses.

My big-box former retailer was similar only in that it regularly espoused the importance of “taking the initiative”. Sadly, management unfailingly managed to rain on your parade when you did so. Sales displays that veered just slightly from the central plan sent from the Politburo, sorry, headquarters, were routinely dismantled. A successful – but ad hoc – way of running our busiest aisle during our busiest day was changed back to the old, slow and considerably less profitable way of doing things. After a while, staff realised that the quiet life was easier and that, despite the rhetoric, initiative is not appreciated and rarely makes the blindest bit of difference in a massive corporation anyway.

In the bike shop, initiative is a way of life. Most staff-invented initiatives make life easier for the staff. Only five of us, including the bosses, work there – so if you don’t do it, it doesn’t get done.

It is refreshing to bin the book. I realise that having 300 people running around doing what they “think is best” would be sheer chaos. But it’s hardly an inspiring work environment to be in when you’re on the receiving end of a policy that, as one middle manager put it, advocates “the death of independent thought”.