Creating a Culture of Empowerment is Hard…But Probably Not for the Reason You Think!
In the first article of this series, titled “Empowerment without Enablement is Entrapment,” we talked about a key problem: empowering your team to make decisions without first enabling them to do so is like asking them to do a job with their hands tied. There are two main things you have to do to enable them to make decisions:
- Change the Culture: Leaders should act more like coaches, helping their teams think through choices, instead of always making decisions.
- Give the Right Training and Tools: Many of our team members haven’t been trained on how to make good decisions, mainly because they never had the chance before.
Today, let’s talk about the first point – how leaders can drive the necessary cultural shift. Intellectually, this isn’t difficult. Leaders simply need to stop making decisions in isolation and engage frontline employees in the process. One very simple and practical piece of advice shared by retired US Navy Submarine Captain David Marquet in his book “Turn the Ship Around” (which I highly recommend) is to adopt the practice of asking for a recommendation, instead of giving direction. It’s a beautifully simple practice that I’ve used myself and encouraged the leaders who work for me to adopt as well. And if leaders in the organization exercise the practice with discipline, then the culture will change. Employees will learn that you want and expect them to be involved in the decision-making process. However, given the countless survey results by experts that tell us leaders are not creating a culture of empowerment, we must conclude that leaders aren’t adopting even this simple practice. Why?
The Pessimistic View
The pessimistic view would be that the majority of leaders and managers think their employees are incapable of making decisions, or that they just don’t want to. Others might say it is because the leaders don’t have a “servant leader” mindset nor do they believe they have an obligation to develop their teams. Still, others may argue that some leaders just think they are smarter than everyone else and want it done their way so everyone will know how smart they are.
While I will not argue that sometimes this is the case, I just can’t accept that this is the reason the majority of initiatives to shift to a culture of empowerment fail. In my experience, most leaders truly believe that they have an obligation to care for and improve the lives of the people they work for. They don’t want to have to make every decision. And they are more than willing to invest their own time to coach and train their employees.
An Alternative View
Instead, I believe there are two fundamental reasons that this strategy fails:
- Habits: For most leaders in an organization with a culture of micromanagement, telling their employees what to do is a reflex reaction. They don’t even think about it. An employee comes to them and says, “The widget turner is broken; what do you want me to do?” The leader thinks about it and tells them what to do, without even realizing that they are perpetuating the norms of a micromanagement culture.
- Time: In a micromanagement culture, the one thing leaders definitely don’t have is time. After all, they have to know everything about the business so they can make all the decisions. When an employee asks them, “What do you want me to do?” it is much faster to just tell them.
What Can We Do?
Regarding the first reason, habits, the best advice I can share is to learn to become very sensitive, almost allergic, to the phrases that indicate a culture of micromanagement. Two phrases I’ve learned to listen for, and have actually developed a physical response to hearing, are “What do you want me to do?” and “I just do what I’m told.” Anytime I hear those phrases, I immediately stop and have a discussion with the employee about my desire for their participation in the decision.
Now, let me illustrate the challenge regarding time constraints with a personal example. Early in my tenure as a Plant Manager at my first plant, I had a Shift Leader come up to me and tell me that one of the forty openings on the press had failed. That meant that we would be losing 2.5% of the capacity of that press until it was repaired. He then asked me, “What do you want me to do?” I dutifully replied, “I’d like you to make a recommendation.” It was clear from the look on his face that he had never been asked this before. He was so uncomfortable that he did everything he could to avoid answering the question, trying to get me to just tell him. Now, in this case, it helped that I was new to the plant and didn’t know the answer off the top of my head, but I was also determined to show him that I wanted him to participate in the decision-making process. So we spent the next 30+ minutes discussing the alternatives (shut it down now and fix it on an unplanned basis, run until the next outage, fix it tomorrow on a planned basis). We then walked through the financial implications of each of the alternatives. At the end of our discussion, there was one alternative that the math said was clearly the right one. The thing about it was, he knew the information and he knew how to do the math; he just didn’t have the practice of using or explaining a decision-making process.
While I was totally energized by the discussion, as was the shift leader, it quickly dawned on me that I had a huge problem. There were more than 400 employees in that plant, and even if I recruited all the other managers (there were only about a dozen), it would take us forever to have that exact same conversation and go through that exercise with them. I wouldn’t have time to do anything else. This, I believe, is the fundamental reason that so many initiatives to empower frontline employees fail. Not because the leaders don’t want to empower their teams, or because they believe they are incapable of ever making good decisions. Rather, it is because after a few attempts like the one I described, they have to give up and go back to being directive, or nothing will get done.
This challenge of time constraints in no way absolves leaders from making the behavior shift that will drive the cultural change, but it does mean that we have to take a more strategic approach to teaching employees how to make and communicate decisions. That strategic approach is what we will begin to explore in the next article. If that is of interest to you, I encourage you to “follow” me, and to “like” or “repost” this article so that LinkedIn’s algorithm will ensure it shows up in your feed.
In the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this article in the comments. In particular, I would be interested (and I’m sure other would be as well) on other phrases you have heard that are indicators of a culture of micromanagement.
Thank you for investing your time in this read.
Seeking to enable your team to make better decisions? Schedule a consultation with Chris. There’s no cost.
#enablingempowerment #decisionmaking #leadership #empoweremployees #culturechange
Chris Seifert is an operations leader with 25+ years of experience managing high-risk, complex manufacturing operations and advising senior executives on strategy, leadership, culture, and execution. Most recently Chris led Enviva Biomass’s manufacturing operations, first as VP HSEQ and then VP Operations, during a 6-year period in which revenue grew from $450MM to >$1B, plant production increased by >200% through commissioning new assets, integrating acquisitions, and organic growth, while reducing safety incident rates by more than 85% and growing adjusted EBITDA by >250%. As a Partner at Wilson Perumal and Company, Chris founded and grew an Operational Excellence Consulting Practice and became recognized internationally as a leading expert on Operational Excellence (OE), Operational Discipline (OD), and Operational Excellence Management Systems (OEMS). Chris has also served as a Plant Manager for Georgia Pacific and Owens-Corning and served in the US Navy Nuclear Submarine Force as a Supply Officer.
