The Change Dude’s Blog

Where, oh where has empowerment gone?

In the late ’80’s and early ’90’s empowerment was all the rage.  Building self directed work teams in your organization was a top priority to improve productivity, innovation and reduce management layers.  During that period I had the pleasure and adventure of developing and deploying over 200 such teams in a variety of clients.  The results were staggeringly positive.  Since that time talk of empowerment has tailed off quite a bit.  Very few clients have undertaken the task of truly empowering their organizations to do great things.  In fact, recent developments have highlighted the bloated management layers that evolved since.  Many of the RIF victims over the past few months have been to thin the management layers.

I’m initiating the “Empower Now” campaign.  Just to remind us all that the magic behind true empowerment comes from this little equation, for the quantitiative among us, from Fisher E=f(A,R,I,A) where empowerment is a function of Authority, Resources, Information and Accountability.  Where any of the variables equate to Zero there is no empowerment.  As layers of managment grow possession of authority and accountability move to a single leader away from the team. It is clear that to justify 8 or 10 layer deep organizations, all the rage these days, many executives have built an environment where team members feel far less empowered to impact.

Today’s renewal environment offers a wonderful opportunity to invigorate through empowerment.  Push innovation and change through the active and overt involvement of every team member.  Remove barriers and allow productivity to flourish.  Arguing that single leader working groups make sense today is short sighted.  Information is readily available, simple to share and act on.  Resources are scarce but exist in the spirit of the team.  Layers are trimmed to open doors for authority and accountability. 

If there’s any doubt of the power that self directed work environments generate just visit the story of Semco Brazil.  Semco Brazil transitioned to a shared leaderhsip, empowerment culture to meet the demands of a near-death economic crisis and never looked back.  Employees make their own schedules, set their own salaries, senior leaders swap top job roles every six months. 

Empower NOW!!!

April 24, 2009 - Posted by thechangedude | Thinking About Associates