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Make Every Day Independence Day for Employees
By Richard Hadden and Bill Catlette
July 4th has always been a big day in the U.S. With fireworks, picnics, and barbecues, we celebrate our independence as a sovereign nation. In the last couple of years, those celebrations seem to have been even more meaningful.
But when many of us return to work after the holiday, all reminders of "independence" vanish like the smoky streamers of the previous night's fireworks displays against the starry sky.
In our part of the country, there is a television commercial that makes the point beautifully. A customer approaches a fast food counter and orders a hamburger, without pickles. Well! That request sets off a series of calls, first to the store manager, then to an area supervisor, and finally to the big cheese in corporate headquarters, who consults his policy manual and then gives permission to serve the item without the standard condiments. So befuddled is the crew by this departure from procedure, that the hamburger is delivered to the customer not only without pickles, but without meat.
An exaggeration perhaps, but not a gross one. The sad thing is that countless thousands of calls are made each day, to those farther north on the organizational chart, to ask for decisions better made closer to the customer.
What we're advocating is something that many have come to call "empowerment". Let's rethink the concept.
Who knows who coined the term "empowerment" in the modern business lexicon? Who cares? The point is that, over the last 20 years or so, this humble word, used to describe a well-intentioned concept, has reached virus-like proportions, and has taken on a life of its own. But like many words, in its journey from obscurity to ubiquity, its meaning has become hopelessly muddled.
Your employees may not actually need "empowering" at all. What they need is for us as managers to stop "disempowering" them, and to get off their necks long enough for them to do their jobs!
Managers whose employees are overly dependent on them are like the gardener trying to grow a garden in a desert. You can grow a garden in a desert, but you must be vigilant in keeping the garden watered, fertilized, and free of pestilence. It's a full-time job; you can't walk away from it, even for a little while.
Imagine, on the other hand, growing that garden in a fertile valley. Sure, you need to plant seeds, and make sure the garden has what it needs to thrive, and keep it safe from predators, but the point is that while your garden is growing, you can go about in more productive endeavors.
Managers whose employees are like the garden in the desert wear themselves out trying to be everywhere, providing all the answers, and doing their employees' work.
To create an organization that fires on all 8 cylinders, and really performs for the customer, we should "enable" employees to get their jobs done expertly. Skilled leaders do this with Training, Tools, and Trust.
Train them. Empowerment without training equals abandonment. To make employees less dependent on managers, teach everyone the company's values - what's really important around here. Teach them the objectives, the desired end result of their function, and then train them in how to do it.
When you provide employees with answers to the questions they'll inevitably have, even before they ask, and give them the foundation of the fundamental principles that direct the company, you eliminate the need for them to depend on managers to answer every question as it arises. Your customers will appreciate this almost as much as your employees.
Give them the right tools. The two of us hear people say all the time that their employees are "empowered". To which we generally reply, "Oh, yeah? How much of the company's money can they spend?" If someone needs a faster computer, let them get it! If they need a bigger wrench, let them get it! If they spend the company's money foolishly, let them have it! This assumes, of course, that you've prepared them for the responsibility of discretionary spending authority by teaching them the parameters with which to make sound judgments. This is what we mean by training.
We're certainly not advocating that you give your employees a book of blank checks. But the money you save by keeping people equipped with substandard equipment will quickly be devoured by the inefficiency created by not having the right tools.
"Tools" also means "systems". A recent simple ticket purchase at an airline counter required 4 agents, a supervisor in a red coat, and 40 minutes to complete. Why? The airline's convoluted system of figuring fares and collecting money had them all stumped. The ticket agents were all dependent on the supervisor, the only one on duty who knew how to complete this specific transaction, and who was running around like the proverbial headless chicken, trying to render assistance to other agents. Believe me, the airline didn't lose any money on the deal, but they would have made more had the ticket agent been able to punch a few buttons and hand me my ticket.
Have you ever ordered a computer from Mac and PC Connection, the mail order computer people in Marlow, New Hampshire? I have. Lots of times. Once, the box they sent was dead on arrival. I called the 800 number, and within two minutes, I was speaking with a repair technician named Ann. She walked me through some basic diagnostics (for me, they've got to be basic), and one rather simple repair attempt, but no luck.
At this point Ann apologized for my problem (even though she didn't make the computer), and asked if it would be okay if they shipped a replacement to me that evening, for delivery the next morning. "Don't you need to check with somebody before you ship me another $2500 computer, particularly since you won't even have this one back yet?" I asked, assuming that Ann must certainly be "dependent" on some higher power to govern her delivery of customer service. "No sir, I can see you've done business with us for a while, and that won't be necessary. I'm just sorry you had the problem. As soon as you can, pack up the defective machine, call us, and we'll have it picked up".
This Independence Day, and every day, prepare your employees to be able to make profitable decisions, independent of their managers. As a manager, you'll do a better job, and your organization will perform better.
You can depend on it.
Please print the following attribution for this article: Bill Catlette and Richard Hadden, co-authors of Contented Cows Give Better Milk, help clients clobber the competition by having a focused, fired up, and capably led workforce. They deliver powerful conference keynotes and leadership training. They can be reached at 800-940-7006 (+1-904-720-0870 from outside North America) or www.ContentedCows.com.