Empowerment. Trendy yes, but it works – Focal Point Business Coaching Blanchardstown
I’m always reluctant to slip in to management speak when working with business owners. It can be a real turn off for people who want to work in the real world and not a theoretical world.
Empowerment is definitely all the rage and has been for a while now and sometimes labels just don’t do justice to how powerful a concept can be.
So let’s drop the label and look at the concept of empowering people in your organisation.
I thought I’d share my own experience of this with you and see how it could parallel your own and how it could work for your business.
I had a background up to 8/9 years ago of working for primarily blue chip organisations. Great companies such as Proctor and Gamble, VF Corporation and Hallmark Cards. They are great companies and were great to work for, but up to a point.
The rigidity of the structures were ultimately a great source of frustration for me personally.
It was hard to be innovative, creative and to capitalise on new opportunities. There was a serious lack of freedom to make decisions and a lack of entrepreneurialism.
I subsequently become disenfranchised and wanted to become a part of an organisation that allowed me to develop my own ideas, my entrepreneurial instincts.
I subsequently joined a large privately owned Irish company run by two incredibly successful serial entrepreneurs.
If you want to talk about empowerment that’s exactly what they gave out in spades. In truth there was no “strategic thinking” behind this approach. It wasn’t given a catchy corporate name.
Quite simply I saw an opportunity to develop a business in the UK market. I went to my CEO and asked for the opportunity to pursue this opportunity.
His style was very much to encourage this approach.
We had a meeting to discuss the opportunity, and a decision was made. Initially my brief was to target the Scottish market, build a business there and if successful extend our reach in to England and Wales.
I was given the support I needed.
I was given the resource I needed which to be honest was not a huge amount initially.
I was given to freedom to assemble my team.
I was given the time to develop the opportunity.
This was an incredible departure from what I was used to . The whole decision process took a matter of hours. The plan was formulated quickly and I acted immediately. I literally signed our first client the following day.
You know what, it was also a little scary as I was now responsible for my own decisions. I hadn’t had this responsibility since running my own business in my early 20’s.
The key thing here from all of this is that I was given a huge level of responsibility. The ability to make decisions. The ability to act on instinct if there was no real evidence available to make informed decisions. The ability to create my own team, with our own culture, values and mission and shared goals. This was empowering in every extent.
Secondly and just as importantly I was held accountable for all of my decisions. I met my CEO weekly at 8am on a Monday morning.
I presented the business metrics and there was a relentless focus on performance and the numbers. I presented monthly to the board and was accountable for a sizeable budget in full.
This was very challenging, very difficult at times, I made a huge number of mistakes, but I always made more progress than I did mistakes.
The environment created was unbelievably innovative and forward looking. We saw only opportunity where others saw roadblocks. There was no “corporate mindset” that stifled this creativity with paperwork and hierarchy. I really thrived in this environment.
This is why I love being a business owner now. I have the ability to look for opportunity and seize it. I have the benefit of speed, agility and working sometimes on instinct.
These are the ingredients we all need in our teams these days. We have entered the age of innovation and being creative, agile and quick to change are no longer luxuries we can afford to postpone.
Are your team truly “empowered” to make decisions? To make mistakes? To be innovative?
I know some of you are going “here we go again”, I don’t have people like this on my team. Well why not? Whose responsibility is this? What are the core values you seek in your team members?
You might find that you do have some team members with great potential. I don’t believe that mine was ever fully realised up until the last 8 years.
Business is about people. Business success is about people. Innovation is about people.
Actions,
Be honest with yourself and look hard at your business and the team. Are they truly motivated? Are they inspired? Is this due to an inability to truly express themselves and their capabilities because the structure of the business stifles them?
Take the decision to create a more entrepreneurial environment in your business and implement change for 2011. You’ll see the benefits in your team and your business.
Finally ensure that if you are giving more freedom to people to be innovative that they are held accountable for their decisions. That there are clear written goals, and that they are given the ongoing support needed to enable them to achieve these goals.
