The Hindu Business Line : The charm and challenge of empowerment

TO SUCCEED in the fast-forward and fiercely competitive business environment, corporates need to use the knowledge, skill, ideas, and energy of every employee in the organisation. The best companies train and turn out a coterie of leaders from within their rank and file: such organizations consist of employees — at all levels — who take initiative and accept responsibility on their own.

Their identity with, and a sense of belonging to, the organisation are par excellence.

There are many ways to describe or characterise such employees in a company. In the Silicon Valley, they say that "they are like a volunteer corps" — people who contribute their best willingly because they want to do it for the sake of doing, and not because thereby they have to earn a living.

A more popular expression in Europe is that such employees act and perform as though they are the owners of the company.

Indeed, in the business world of the 21st century, a coterie of leaders within a corporate seems to be imperative. In this era of consumer sovereignty, when products and services offered by the trade are almost akin and identical in quality and reliability, it is the employees' calibre and degree of service and responsiveness, which distinguish and differentiate the winner from the also-ran.

Now, how can a company transform its workforce into such a coterie of leaders?

It is possible only by creating an environment in which people are empowered to bring out their total being into their performance: By creating a workplace wherein people are energised and motivated to contribute as much as they can to concretise the goals of the organisation.

Creating a coterie inside a company calls for an exemplary and immaculate leadership at the helm. It requires the top management to take a hard look at itself, and introspect whether, in the first place, it is modelling the mindset and displaying the kind of conduct, which it expects from and behoves its employees to acquire and adopt.

Coupled with such an inspiring leadership and complementing it with an apposite ambience in which employees will be stirred and stimulated to deliver their best will be an ideal way to create a coterie of leaders.

Given their proximity to the customer, employees in the front line and lower down the hierarchy are the people to locate problems better than their seniors.

They confront and endure customer tirades resulting from a bad service; and hence, if they acquire necessary power and training, they can resolve these issues better and faster.

Creativity and innovation are sine qua non in the current commercial scenario of globalisation, rapid technological change, and intense international competition.

Downsizing and de-layering having become inevitable, resulting in the mass exodus of middle-level managers.

Hence, employees who are lower down the rung are required to take more responsibility. Self-managing teams are the order of the day: Most decisions are made by these teams which, in the earlier era, used to be the prerogative of the leaders at the top.

Thus, and therefore, today's challenge is to build an organisational culture in which every employee must work to his full potential; and every employee must imbibe the mien and mindset of a corporate chieftain.

Recruiting and retaining the right people who are capable of such leadership is another hassle and hurdle for corporate management.

A company that can create a culture that attracts the best and the brightest will have an edge over its competition.

Employees want to know whether they are valued, and that the company is providing everything to enable them to be all that they can be. People who expect and also experience such an environment seldom quit the organisation.

There is no better way to encourage employees to perform like leaders than by empowerment. The first step will be to bring about a controlled burn of current understanding, or misunderstanding of the doctrine of empowerment. A `controlled burn' is a planned and premeditated forest fire, focused to burn off and extinguish the forest debris in a systematic manner.

It will be a quick-action conflagration in which no damage will occur either to the treetops or roots. It is a necessary palliative for a healthy ecosystem.

Similarly, it is time to introduce a controlled burn of the much-maligned notion of empowerment, to liberate it from any stigma, and facilitate its benign influence in the corporate context.

The principle of empowerment may be traced back to the civil rights and women's liberation movements during the 1960s. The idea was to endow people with the power to control their own destiny — what is otherwise known as self-determination.

For business organisations, it implied transferring of real power, and decision-making authority to its employees. Most managers groomed in the classical school were unable to digest the change and fallout of this doctrine.

And, therefore, empowerment received a raw deal at their hands. Thus, the core concept of empowerment was corrupted and prostituted in due course of time.

Whereas genuine empowerment warrants that authoritarian managers are transformed into people leaders: That they develop trust and confidence in their people and their competence to manage their own tasks successfully.

However, managers are quite often uncertain and pessimistic about how much autonomy their employees can handle without becoming loose cannons.

Control systems carry an intrinsic message that employees cannot be trusted. Control systems create pressures for conformity rather than encourage initiative and risk-taking. Under such a cloud of ambivalence, empowerment will neither be here, nor there.

A bureaucratic system supports multiple layers of hierarchy, which invariably impede change. To get an initiative approved, half a dozen people must say `yes'.

But to stall it, it is sufficient if one person says `no'. Typically, the consequence is short-term thinking, narrowly defined accountability, and lackadaisical endorsement of employee-triggered innovation and change.

Conflict among peers about the means to achieve goals creates a hostile working environment, where people are more concerned about protecting themselves, rather than focussing on what is right, and what is good for the organisation.

Time constraints are imposed on managers and their employees alike in today's business world.

Organisations have to be necessarily lean and thin to survive, if not thrive, in the rat race for winning in the market. Hence, every employee is required to do the job of more than one person. 24/7 is the expected and accepted norm of working pattern. Under such a "pressure cooker" atmosphere, people display only a low propensity for initiating anything new. On the other hand, they tend to crib and complain about less and less time and space for family life.

On top of all these, there is a semantic trap leading to a misreading of empowerment. When a manager says that he is `empowering' his employees, in reality, it is not so.

No one (however mighty) in an organisation can truly empower anyone else (however humble) in that organisation. Telling people that they are empowered is just a myth and fiction. It cannot be done by ticking off items on a checklist.

The person who is telling people has the real and intrinsic power and authority.

Perhaps, what managers can do is to create a congenial and conducive climate for people to seek and secure power — if they so desire — for themselves. "One man may lead a horse to the pond, but 20 cannot make him drink," said Samuel Johnson.

It is true of empowerment. When conditions are propitious, employees will feel trusted to take initiative, to make decisions, to enjoy freedom, to feel empowered and, therefore, to conduct themselves as responsible persons and behave as leaders endowed with power and authority.

Delving deeper into the construct of empowerment, it is found that it will flower and flourish only in a culture, wherein people develop a mindset characterised by a sense of self-determination, belonging/ownership, and a robust degree of competence — all of which does not happen overnight.

Experience shows that managers find it difficult to commence, leave alone complete, the journey towards genuine empowerment. Some just do not have the courage or the conviction to start the programme. Some others stumble along the way, decide to abort the attempt, and turn back.

Self-determination implies that people ought to feel that they are not subject to micromanagement. It represents an internal endorsement of their external actions. Employees derive a feeling of fulfilment when their actions resonate with their personal value system.

Such activities always produce a sense of purpose, passion and psychic energy. The role of the management is confined to providing an enabling environment to their employees. Beyond that, it is for the employees to discover the charm and challenge in empowerment.

(The author is a Chennai-based freelance writer.)

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