On July 4, 1776, in a sweltering hall in Philadelphia, 56 men gathered to sign “the unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.” Well, it’s July again, and we think it’s time for another kind of declaration of independence. Too many knowledge workers — professionals with immense talent, experience, and drive to do meaningful work — are stifled by managers who misunderstand what effective management means. In misguided attempts to boost productivity and direct innovation, managers can kill both creativity and passion — the intrinsic motivation required to stay deeply engaged in work — by destroying people’s autonomy.

Maybe you can identify with a marketing professional, an MBA we’ll call Sophie, who worked as a product manager in a consumer products company. Although her team had supposedly been given “entrepreneurial responsibility” for creating cool, next-generation cooking appliances, and although the team had actually made great strides toward inventing a small mixer with a unique ergonomic handle, upper-managers kept all the important decision rights for themselves. To make matters worse, they vacillated wildly in those decisions, rarely explaining them and never consulting with the team. Here’s how Sophie described it:

I don’t understand why R&D kills so many of my projects when I am supposedly measured on new product development! The VP of R&D killed my new hand-held mixer three times before it was approved a couple weeks ago. They have very conflicting goals, causing us to start, stop, re-start, etc.

To be truly intrinsically motivated and to gain a sense of achievement when they do make progress, people need to have some say in their own work. What’s more, when employees have freedom in how to do the work, they are more creative. Two key aspects of autonomy are having the ability to make meaningful decisions in work and then feeling confident that — barring serious errors or dramatic shifts in conditions — those decisions will hold. If they often get overridden by management, people quickly lose the motivation to make any decision, which severely inhibits progress. Work gets delayed because people feel like they have to wait and “check in” before they can begin or change anything.

In our research across industries as diverse as consumer products, chemicals, and high tech, we found many knowledge workers whose extensive expertise went untapped and whose initial excitement about tackling challenging projects got deflated. Too often, the culprits were managers who believed that to do a good job, they had to direct the work — tell people exactly what to do and how to do it, making changes as they alone saw fit. These managers failed to realize three things:

Managers themselves almost never have the specific knowledge that well-trained, experienced professionals have about the work they are doing. Failing to draw on that knowledge is a lamentable waste of resources. Professionals become demoralized, disgusted, and apathetic if they lack the autonomy to at least co-direct the work they are doing. Organizations lose out in a big way if their professionals become disengaged. Even if those professionals don’t decamp for greener pastures, they’re not doing their best work.

So, borrowing from the language our founding fathers used, here is a declaration of independence that we believe many of the professionals in our research would sign:

We hold these truths to be self-evident: We are passionate about using our expertise and creativity; we deserve trust.

The history of many present managers is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations: For too long, we have had our ideas ignored and our projects micromanaged

We solemnly declare that we are, and of right ought to be, free and independent thinkers and creators: We declare our independence as professionals who will do good work if only you give us clear, meaningful goals and then let us figure out how to meet those goals.

We pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor: If you respect us as professionals worthy of autonomy in our work, we will commit ourselves to doing something great for this organization.

So, what about you? Would you sign?