Examine Corporate Actions.

Policies. What gets rewarded gets done. What gets punished gets avoided. Corporate policies and procedures such as performance review and merit increases show people what is really important to senior management. For example, if people are told to work collaboratively but their performance reviews pit them against each other in forced appraisal ran

Empowerment is an overused and under?practiced term. When people are empowered they bring their minds to work. They are engaged in making decisions that affect their part of the business. They take responsibility for their actions. They work free from the petty bureaucratic hassles that diminish value and waste time. They add value to the organization by embracing the principles of quality and service. They search for ways to make a difference.

Why Empowerment is Critical

Most organizations need knowledge workers -- men and women whose chief resource is their ability to think and act on what they know. Computer programmers, systems analysts, accountants, lawyers, managers, sales teams, and even factory workers must use their best judgment to solve problems and respond to opportunities.

Nordstrom is legendary in its customer service because it encourages and expects staff to make decisions that will make customers happy. A local Nordstrom store gives new staff a one-page employee handbook to illustrate this point. It reads: Use your best judgment at all times.

Why Empowerment Works

In Caught in the Middle (Productivity, 1992), I suggest that most people want a few basic things from work: meaning, results, challenge and an opportunity to learn, respect and recognition, control over their own part of the work, affiliation or knowing they are part of a bigger team.

These six items form the foundation of all good empowerment efforts. Remove any of them and you weaken the individual's commitment to his or her work. Fortunately, with regard to motivation, what's good for the individual is also good for the company.

Making Empowerment Work

Build on the six basic things people want (these are listed above.) Consider these items as a bedrock for all initiatives to increase empowerment. In addition, consider the following:

Clear Vision and Direction. Corporate leadership must know why it wants empowerment.

• What do you want to achieve from it?
• What would empowerment look like here?
• How committed are you to making empowerment a reality?
• Is empowerment essential or simply something that would be nice to have?

Examine Corporate Actions.

Policies. What gets rewarded gets done. What gets punished gets avoided. Corporate policies and procedures such as performance review and merit increases show people what is really important to senior management. For example, if people are told to work collaboratively but their performance reviews pit them against each other in forced appraisal rank

Why Empowerment is Critical

Most organizations need knowledge workers -- men and women whose chief resource is their ability to think and act on what they know. Computer programmers, systems analysts, accountants, lawyers, managers, sales teams, and even factory workers must use their best judgment to solve problems and respond to opportunities.

Nordstrom is legendary in its customer service because it encourages and expects staff to make decisions that will make customers happy. A local Nordstrom store gives new staff a one-page employee handbook to illustrate this point. It reads: Use your best judgment at all times.

Why Empowerment Works

In Caught in the Middle (Productivity, 1992), I suggest that most people want a few basic things from work: meaning, results, challenge and an opportunity to learn, respect and recognition, control over their own part of the work, affiliation or knowing they are part of a bigger team.

These six items form the foundation of all good empowerment efforts. Remove any of them and you weaken the individual's commitment to his or her work. Fortunately, with regard to motivation, what's good for the individual is also good for the company.

Making Empowerment Work

Build on the six basic things people want (these are listed above.) Consider these items as a bedrock for all initiatives to increase empowerment. In addition, consider the following:

Clear Vision and Direction. Corporate leadership must know why it wants empowerment.

• What do you want to achieve from it?
• What would empowerment look like here?
• How committed are you to making empowerment a reality?
• Is empowerment essential or simply something that would be nice to have?

Examine Corporate Actions.

Policies. What gets rewarded gets done. What gets punished gets avoided. Corporate policies and procedures such as performance review and merit increases show people what is really important to senior management. For example, if people are told to work collaboratively but their performance reviews pit them against each other in forced appraisal ran

Why Empowerment Works

In Caught in the Middle (Productivity, 1992), I suggest that most people want a few basic things from work: meaning, results, challenge and an opportunity to learn, respect and recognition, control over their own part of the work, affiliation or knowing they are part of a bigger team.

These six items form the foundation of all good empowerment efforts. Remove any of them and you weaken the individual's commitment to his or her work. Fortunately, with regard to motivation, what's good for the individual is also good for the company.

Making Empowerment Work

Build on the six basic things people want (these are listed above.) Consider these items as a bedrock for all initiatives to increase empowerment. In addition, consider the following:

Clear Vision and Direction. Corporate leadership must know why it wants empowerment.

• What do you want to achieve from it?
• What would empowerment look like here?
• How committed are you to making empowerment a reality?
• Is empowerment essential or simply something that would be nice to have?

Examine Corporate Actions.

Policies. What gets rewarded gets done. What gets punished gets avoided. Corporate policies and procedures such as performance review and merit increases show people what is really important to senior management. For example, if people are told to work collaboratively but their performance reviews pit them against each other in forced appraisal ran

Making Empowerment Work

Build on the six basic things people want (these are listed above.) Consider these items as a bedrock for all initiatives to increase empowerment. In addition, consider the following:

Clear Vision and Direction. Corporate leadership must know why it wants empowerment.

• What do you want to achieve from it?
• What would empowerment look like here?
• How committed are you to making empowerment a reality?
• Is empowerment essential or simply something that would be nice to have?

Examine Corporate Actions.

Policies. What gets rewarded gets done. What gets punished gets avoided. Corporate policies and procedures such as performance review and merit increases show people what is really important to senior management. For example, if people are told to work collaboratively but their performance reviews pit them against each other in forced appraisal ran

Examine Corporate Actions.

Policies. What gets rewarded gets done. What gets punished gets avoided. Corporate policies and procedures such as performance review and merit increases show people what is really important to senior management. For example, if people are told to work collaboratively but their performance reviews pit them against each other in forced appraisal ranking, people will protect their own self?interests. If you encourage cross?functional teamwork, but performance reviews only acknowledge work accomplished within a department, interdepartmental cooperation will suffer.

Unwritten Rules. These norms tell people how the game is played. People learn that these unwritten rules are as important as any written policy. For example, a manager may tell staff to always tell him or her the truth, but proceed to punish the messenger who brings the bad news.

Structure. To borrow a phrase from David Hanna’s book, "Organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they get." NUMMI is a highly successful auto manufacturing plant that relies on high worker commitment and skill. It replaced a terrible GM plant in which absenteeism was running at 25% the year it closed and where quality was a joke. Ironically, when NUMMI opened, it hired back many of the same seemingly unmotivated workers from the old plant. The only major difference between NUMMI and its predecessor was how it was managed. People were free to stop the assembly line to solve quality problems. They were encouraged to learn many different tasks so they could add greater value to the assembly process. In short, they were empowered.

Why Is It So Difficult To Achieve?

Tom Peters once said, "we are only at the advanced lip service stage." I agree. We often are afraid to trust that others will actually do the work without close scrutiny. I never met anyone who said that a rigorous performance appraisal system helped him or her do better work. Yet most managers believe that it is an essential tool to use to motivate others. (If only those other people were as trustworthy as we.)

Watchful eyes breed dependency. When people try to please mom and dad they fail to take the risks and initiative needed to help a dynamic organization thrive. People wait to be told what to do. As the sign in a French civil servant's office read, "Never do anything for the first time."

If your work is going to be reviewed, folded, spindled, and mutilated by five others up the line before it is approved, why bother giving your best effort?

Our view of organizations is based on hierarchy and chain of command. People above you ma