Replying to LO26196 --
Dear Doc,
I really enjoyed your words about empowerment. In the manufacturing
environment, there's much misuse of idea of empowerment; it is a sham in
the end.
In this list and elsewhere we've written about Deming's idea that fear
must be driven out of the organization. Wow. Easier said than done.
Politics, with personal agendas, mark a considerable part of
organizational behavior.
Even when two people are trying to decide on options, and there is either
collaboration or accommodation, it's sometimes very hard to reach accord.
Multiply that by a thousand! Ten thousand! Despite vision statements
framed and hung on reception area walls, unified, aligned activities are
sometimes missing in businesses. So much history hangs on the "Walls of
Fame," so many are the remnants of the mechanical model of business
organizations, so rampant and trumpeted are the misuses of power, that
some people are plain scared to take control, become accountable, face the
consequences of failure AND success! the exceptions to this description
are truly wonderful places to visit or work in.
Empowerment is the product of freedom times support times direction.
E= F x S x D.
Golly, I feel like a mathematician! The reason it's a product and not a
sum is because if any one of the factors is zero, then empowerment is
zero.
Freedom is the trickiest: the room, the space the authority to decide or
recommend, speak out, learn, innovate, take risks. We know all that stuff;
that's not new.
Support is just that. A leader/director/manager/sponsor must give leave in
an explicit way for the employee to forge ahead. Such a person, in the
day-to-day, provides as much political support as anything; s/he's a point
person for the "empowered" work.
Direction means that there is an explicit connection between what the
employee is doing and the strategic (oops, there it is again...) goals of
the organization for whatever period of time is appropriate. The direction
of the empowered work is aligned with the Joshin. And everyone in the
organization knows what those strategic annual goals are, how they cascade
down into the organization, affecting divisions, departments, cells,
individuals.
So, that's my take on empowerment, a difficult idea in difficult times.
Warm regards,
Barry
--Barry Mallis <theorgtrainer@earthlink.net>
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