‘Empowerment’ may be a cuss without a framework….

The best way to motivate the employees in any workplace is allowing them to have their say thus giving them a sense of achievement. In that respect delegating authority, participative decision-making, freedom to operate, all those practices with good intentions, merge into much laudable jargon in the modern management science – “Empowerment”.  There is no doubt that empowerment is a great motivating tool with the possibility of increased morale, productivity, job-satisfaction and maybe creativity, innovation; as it provides an entrepreneurial platform for the employees enterprising enough to take risks to achieve the results.

At the same time, if not implemented in a thoughtful manner, it can create chaos and even sometime may turn into an indelible blunder. The principle behind empowerment is to achieve the business goals through ownership thus allowing better and faster decision-making. That principle may be violated if the decisions taken by the empowered individual are not aligned to the organization goal and still worst, if they are only meant to satisfy individual ego or individual goals. Empowerment may bring in arrogance and its associated evils resulting in employees refusing to share information, more over refusing to report to, feeling insecure thus inhibiting any creativity or innovation. Instead of bringing in efficiency in decision-making, organization may be working now in remedial measures and risk containment.

‘Empowerment’ sounds good where it is implemented within a framework of four tenets- Personality, Culture, Communication and Reviews. Let us not assume that every individual in any organization has the same traits for taking ownership. We got to have a deeper understanding of the individual on his/her background, experience, emotional maturity, entrepreneurial mindset and more over alignment to organization vision and mission; before we select the candidature for empowerment. Delegation of authority does not depend upon the organization size, shape or spread; rather it very much depends on the culture of the organization – risk taking, tolerating failures, learning from each other and promoting merit. Culture of the organization also hinges upon the style of communication - how open is the communication among employees across hierarchies, how transparent is the business decisions and how well business goals are articulated to create synergy among all. And a check and balance through structured review mechanism ensures that empowerment is really a catalyst creating leaders to put the organization in top gear and not otherwise.