Unless you have empowerment working in your business, you're wasting the full potential of your team. Find out why here.
If you have been wondering whether you should embrace empowerment in your team or organization, here are 7 arguments that just might convince you.
1. Command-and-Tell Is Out. Until very recently, the only conceivable form of management in our organisations was a command-and-tell one. That's one where the person at the top issued all the commands and sent them down the line. This structure no longer works. Firstly, it is inappropriate for modern forms of business, where things move quicker than ever before. And secondly, a more aware, educated, and informed workforce won't wear it. That's why, if you're still operating under old authoritarian forms of management, time is running out for you.
2. Competitive Advantage. Organisational survival is more dependent than ever on the customer. Around the turn of the last century, it may have been OK for Ford to say the customer could have any colour "as long as it's black". Not any more. Today, customers can simply go elsewhere. The fact is, that all the traditional variables of business - raw materials, systems, management - are no longer exclusive. The one thing that does mark you out, though, is the kind of experience that customers get. And that depends on how your employees behave. Shackle them by telling them they are too stupid to take their own decisions and you'll lose whatever competitive advantage you had. Empower them and you'll gain it for good.
3. We Are All Managers. We all lead more complicated lives than ever before. The average adult now has to manage what is in effect a dynamic business in their own domestic lives. They have mortgages to manage, money to manage, relationships to manage, children to manage, households to manage, social lives to manage. And yet, when they come to work, we often give them simple and meaningless tasks to perform. And then, as an added insult, we appoint someone over them with the implicit message that they are not up to it. Imagine the difference you would make if you simply tapped in to their home-honed managerial skills!
4. Team Power. It is now widely recognised that the most productive unit in the organisation is the Team. The team together can work with each other in a much more powerful way than the individual and the boss can. This is because there are no barriers of status, no distinctions of rank, and no blurring of purposes. The team can, quite simply, focus exclusively on their goal. If managed well, teams can produce ideas, opportunities to achieve and a synergy that surpasses the contributions of individuals on their own. Old "command-and-tell" approaches to people were based on managing people one-to-one; new approaches focus on the team.
5. Employee Expectations. Our parent's and grandparents' generation had a different view of the workplace than we do. Theirs was a "job for life" mentality in which do-as-you're-told loyalty was rewarded with a job from 15 to 65. Today's generation neither want nor expect to spend their whole life working in one organization. When surveyed about what they want from a job, "the chance to work independently" and "the chance to learn" always come higher on the list than employment and security.
6. The Power of Information. The changes going on in our organizations and workplaces have been brought about by an unprecedented access to information. We now know what goes on in our organizations to an extent never experienced before. It is instant, constant and huge. Moreover, and most significantly, the information is no longer restricted to those in power. It is anywhere and everywhere.
7. Developing Your Best Asset. It's a modern truism to say that the best asset of an organization is its people. But it's true. This is what one director of a production organization has to say: "In the past, we employed a worker for his hands. We even called them "manual" workers. Now, with the intense competition from everywhere, we simply cannot afford to ignore the whole contribution that people can make. We need their hands, their heads, and their hearts."
There is no doubt that old hierarchical structures served industry well, even if they wasted a lot of the talent in their people. Today, however, when organizations employ people, they have to use everything that people can offer. Only empowerment and empowered forms of working can bring that about.
© Adcidia™ 2010 (Article99.com)
