Employee Empowerment demystified Part I

The reason empowerment is important is that it enables faster and better decision making. Today’s organizations operate in a complex environment. You cannot rely on following proven optimized processes and best practices because the work is not that predictable anymore. We often find ourselves doing things we haven’t done before. We need experts that can analyze complicated situations, and creative workers that know how to quickly create and validate ideas using experiments. These workers most often know the work better than their managers. So let them decide: decisions will be better because they know better. And they will be faster because the hierarchal chain of authority is short-circuited.

In many organizations, managers get hired or promoted based on their knowledge and expertise. But as complexity grows, it is impossible for a manager to keep up and know everything. A manager can easily become a bottleneck in decision making this way.

Before we get to the actual principles of empowerment itself we must cover the pre-conditions of empowerment. Remember that empowering actually means we are going to re-distribute authority. We are going to rely less on the existing hierarchy to control decision-making. This means we need to replace it with something else.

ENGAGEMENT

An engaged workforce is an important precondition for empowerment. Engaged employees align their own personal goals and values with those of the company. This means they are very motivated to pursue the goals of the company because these are actually their own goals. It is not hard to imagine that we can let engaged employees make more decisions on their own.

PURPOSE & VALUES

For engagement to work it must be clear to everybody why the organization exists and how someone can contribute. This is the job of a Purpose. A purpose acts like a north star. It guides everybody in long-term decisions.

If the purpose helps us make long-term decisions, core values help in daily decision-making. They serve as a checklist that employees can use to judge whether a decision they are about to make is desired or not.

It is not easy to define good values. Don’t settle for motherhood and apple pie like values that everybody uses like integrity, quality, or customer service. Those will not set you apart from anybody else. And besides, would anyone every embrace values like ‘poor quality’ or ‘poor customer service’?. Here are some suggestions:

A tale of Sam

So let’s assume we have an old school command-and-control type of manager, called Sam. Don’t blame Sam by the way, because it’s organizations and the education system that create and maintain Sams. Sam takes part in a new management program in his company with the purpose of turning managers into servant leaders. Sam gets the reason why. He is enthusiastic about the change, a little anxious perhaps, but his guts tell him this is a more effective way. So he is going for it.

On Monday morning Sam gathers his team members telling them he will be a different manager. He will facilitate and coach the members from now on and not be telling them what to do anymore. “I want you guys to be empowered”, he tells them. “You are a self-organizing team from now on”. While the team’s reaction was not as enthusiastic as he had expected, Sam is still confident and excited.

A few weeks go by and Sam is feeling increasingly frustrated. Things are not changing as fast as he had expected. He feels people could be more proactive. Why aren’t they taking initiative?! After all, he has given them every room to do so. Why do they not seem to feel accountable for results? He has just told them what results he expects leaving the ‘how’ up to them, just as they taught him in the servant leadership workshop he attended. But it hasn’t led to better results yet. As a matter of fact, he was forced to step in a couple of times to correct mistakes that were made. He feels that at least some team members cannot handle responsibility. Or maybe they just prefer to be controlled.

This is not an uncommon scenario. Agile coaches and Servant Leadership aficionados will tell you people want to have control over their own work. So why does it proof to be so cumbersome and slow to implement empowerment and delegation? Let’s unravel the principles of empowerment and delegation.

Delegation requires constraints

The first principle seems to be contradicting at first: Empowerment cannot be successful without clear constraints. “Wait a minute, empowerment was about giving people more control. So what are you talking about when you say you need to set constraints?” Delegation is never absolute, so unless you are very transparent which decisions people can make themselves and which they cannot, they will be reluctant to make any decision. People will feel insecure on deciding for themselves if they are not sure if it is really ok. They might take a backseat waiting for others to go first. They might be conspicuous whether the company really means it and will not blame them for the very first mistake they make because of a decision.

Although it might sound contradicting, if you set clear boundaries and are very transparent on them, you create a safe environment for taking initiative.

Delegation is reflexive

Empowerment is reflexive. Delegation is not a one-way street. It goes both ways. Employees have expectations of what they can leave up to the manager too. A team might not feel comfortable with a certain level of delegation for some area (yet), even if you do. As a manager, you need to respect that. Delegation goes not only downwards. It goes up too.

An honest conversation between employees and manager is needed to find out what level of delegation everybody feels comfortable with at the moment for every decision area. Find out what is needed to further delegate a decision and work towards that.

Delegation requires trust and patience

Empowerment requires trust. And patience. When you say you will leave certain decisions to the employees, you better mean it. Don’t come rushing in with good advice the moment you see some hesitation. Trust them to get it sorted out. Even worse is blaming them for a mistake they will inevitably make. Instead of “What were you thinking?!” say “What can we do better next time?”. Your choice of words, no matter how subtle, is crucial. Your mental model might unconsciously lure you into choosing words that have a backwards effect. It will feel frustrating at times, it will test your patience, you will have to stop yourself from stepping in. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean just let them sink. You are there to help if they want it. But don’t take over. Trust goes both ways too: you need to trust the employees, but you need to live up to their trust as well. If you don’t, the momentum is gone and they will not dare to take initiative anytime soon anymore.

Empowerment is an investment, it may take a while before you get your return on investment. Remember, people are wired for compliance. Not by nature, but by organizations and the education system. It starts as soon as children go to school: Suddenly you are required, both literally and figuratively speaking to color within the lines. Mistakes are structurally corrected. “Making a mistake is wrong” is the unconscious message. All day you are supposed to do what you are told. It gets even clearer when you start your first job. Others tell you what to do and how. All employee engagement programs set aside, people feel they are expected to comply. So when you are genuinely trying to change this in your organization, know it will take a while for people to change.

Give and ask intent, rather then give instructions and get compliance

David Marquet, a former submarine commander, created a remarkable turnaround in leadership aboard his ship. One of his most important weapens was intent. By expressing his intent, instead of giving instructions, he empowered his crew members to think and decide for themselves. He framed the goal, but left responsibility how to achieve goals up to them.

It works the other way around too. By asking for somebody’s intent a manager has an opportunity to express his opinion without taking away the psuchological ownership of the decision.