Empowerment
I was at a meeting a couple of days ago and somebody raised a question about empowerment for the employees. They seemed to be looking for an indication from our CFO that they would be empowered to, and entitled to, make decisions without having to refer it to a manager.
I found the question extremely strange as I have always considered the company for which I work to delegate a lot of responsibility to the employees. I have never felt constrained or not permitted to make a decision and thought it odd that a colleague did.
One of the things I do find is that people often shirk that responsibility. They ask for it. They want it. They want to feel that the company trusts them to do the right thing. But they don’t actually want to take action. They are too scared of making the wrong decision.
When recruiting people, I’m always interested in finding out how they respond to that kind of empowerment. I ask them for an example of when they took a wrong decision at work and how they coped with the consequences. Did it deter them from making further decisions?
Giving people the power to make decisions is half the battle. Creating a culture where people feel secure in actually making them is the other half. Where they don’t think they will get fired if it goes wrong. Where genuinely acting in the best interests of the company is the important thing.