In The Reinventor’s Fieldbook, David Osborne and Peter Plastrik detail advice for managers letting go of power and empowering their employees. We review their work here.
Areas for empowerment
Osborne and Plastrik outline that when managers empower their team, they tend to give them authority to make their own decisions in three areas:
Personnel management – For example, setting work and training schedules, establishing performance standards and conducting performance appraisals, administering discipline and determining policies on matters such as sick leave.
Work process redesign – Team members are usually best placed to identify any problems with current work processes, examine the causes, test solutions, make changes and monitor results.
General management functions – Such as planning, budgeting, communicating with suppliers and general problem-solving.
The bureaucratic systems that constrain team members must first be dismantled. The organisation must trust its team members’ ability to make good decisions and perform.
Dismantling bureaucratic controls
To dismantle the bureaucratic controls, several control mechanisms should be targeted:
Centralised organisational structures – These are characterised by central offices that control the various sub-units, generally establishing generic controls.
Management layers – Most organisations have more levels of management than are necessary, which is a hindrance to the running of any system. This increases the time taken to get things done and hampers the initiative of employees.
Strict job descriptions and functional silos – By ‘functional silos’, Osborne and Plastrik mean that organisations tend to organise their processes into functional speciality units, with the work moving from worker to worker in an assembly line manner. This tends to breed inefficient working, with poor communication between the functional silos.
Written rules – Organisations thrive on rules, and often create more than are necessary without stopping to examine how many are surplus to requirements.
Breaking down these restrictive control mechanisms is not simple, but Osborne and Plastrik believe that, if these remain in place, empowerment will not take place and organisations will not move forward.
You need to be aware that, although you may be required to change your methods, you are still needed by the organisation but just in a slightly different role.
Changing perceptions
Although some managers have limited authority to dismantle bureaucratic controls there are some things that can still be done to facilitate empowerment. Employees need to be persuaded that empowerment is a good idea. This may seem strange but, to begin with, many employees may not see empowerment as a positive process. They may question the sincerity of the empowerment process and the benefits for themselves. Being given new responsibilities and accountability are factors which may give many employees pause for thought.
A manager’s role in this situation is as an educator, winning them over to the cause. This can be achieved by:
Communication – Employees need to understand why the empowerment process is occurring. It is important that the whole process is explained, not just the introductory stages.
Information – Employees should be given all the relevant information they need in order to make informed decisions.
Development – Employees cannot be expected to simply pick up the decision-making skills that empowerment will demand of them. These need to be developed and training is often necessary empowerment to be successful.
Rewards – Whether the rewards come in a financial form or in the form of recognition and further opportunities, employees will be motivated by the idea of some form of reward.
Reference: David Osborne & Peter Plastrik, The Reinventor’s Fieldbook: Tools for Transforming Your Government.
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