We’ve all heard the term empowerment used before, many times over, to the point that it’s becoming a leadership cliché. We’ve also experienced the frustrations of both management and employees as they endeavor to change a culture through “permitting” their employees to do more. The vision of employee teams taking on the problems in their respective areas, solving them and improving the business is a worthy pursuit for sure. All too often though, the quest for true empowerment enlightenment fails, leaving employees unable to effect improvements in real time and managers bewildered and confused as to why employees aren’t clamoring for the opportunity to embrace more autonomy. Make no mistake though, the failure of organizations to make the changes necessary to allow for a cultural shift and realize the benefits of an empowered workforce, lies with its leaders.
In its simplest form, to empower someone is to give them permission or authority to do something. Essentially, letting someone make a decision, pull a lever, create an improvement or lead a team. Whatever the example is, the key point is they are given permission. Where does that permission come from? It comes from the organization’s leadership hierarchy’s who are willing to subjugate some of its power to others for the organizations’ greater good. This can be an issue for leaders for a myriad of reasons. Letting go of control can be difficult, even for the most well-intentioned. However, some leaders are unwilling to relinquish the power necessary to allow for the organization’s real transition. Whether it is from a leadership style that is grounded in a more authoritarian philosophy, or a primal need for self-preservation out of fear of losing one’s status or title in the organization’s management structure. We’ve seen these leader’s definition of empowerment before. That is, employees are empowered “to do what I say when I say too”. We’ve also heard their excuses before which typically blame employees’ weaknesses as reasons, they are unable to do or be more. Is it any wonder why these organizations will continue the chaos and demoralization of their work force due to frustrations associated with repetitive problems and no end in sight?
Empowering your employees also means you give them the resources to achieve and affect outcomes, not just the permission and delegated authority. This is where the benefits of adopting a continuous improvement culture comes in. You can’t skip the phases of learning, training, and doing and go right to empowerment. This is what we see in organizations all too often who claim they want this culture. The fact of the matter is, it takes time to change a culture and organizations often abandon the fundamentals that must be created too early, especially if they don’t see immediate results to the bottom line. This is what the Zeal Dynamics “tag” line, Energize – Empower – Excel references. To energize a work force, you must first show them the way. This is where teaching a continuous improvement philosophy comes into play. By showing them the process improvement methods associated with CI and how to utilize them, they become energized to find and solve problems. As they begin to see the results, they are ready to learn even more Lean tools and problem-solving methods and how to apply them. From that, they become empowered through the confidence of executing the improvements and realizing the gains. They are now capable of identifying problems while designing and implementing solutions on their own, through an established CI process. As this occurs, leaders can delegate even more while their employees enjoy additional opportunities to improve their work. This is something that can be realized, but it takes time. It is up to organizational leaders to keep the momentum of CI moving forward, encouraging it, supporting it and finally, expecting it. When leaders understand that CI, and the resulting empowerment realizations, is a long-term business strategy, they will see the culture of their organizations shift into ones of empowerment, and they will see their employee teams truly excel.
Craig Wilson, Founder/Principal Consultant – Zeal Dynamics