Empowerment: Rejuvenating a potent idea
In the
article “Empowerment: Rejuvenating a potent idea”, Russ Forrester explanations
six reasons why so many organizations today fail to effetely empower their
employees; Those reasons are: (1) Precipitous empowerment mandates, (2)
Over reliance on a narrow psychological concept, (3) One-size-fits-all, (4) Negligence
of the needs of power sharers, (5) A piece-meal approach and, (6) distortions
of accountability.
Of the six reasons, I personally think that precipitous empowerment
mandate and one-size-fits all, are typical among most organizations. The old
switcheroo act happens all the time, where employees who are promised higher positions
of power but never receive them; only to find out that the position had been
given to someone else within their department. For some reason, many
organizations today choose to only promote those who they deem worthy rather
than those who are actually qualified. This kind of fast-track empowerment gives
employees a false since of hope and explains why so many employees lack
motivation.
The concept one-size-fits-all is somewhat relative in
that it implies that employees are all the same and that the approach used to
empower an employee is also the same. According to Forrester (2000), such deployment
of empowerment is destructive and guarantees failure. Making assumptions is one
thing, but assuming that most decisions have the same requirements and/ or that
the person of power who makes such executive decisions can easily be replaced
is outlandish. Although, this non-selective approach to decision making is
professional and curious, it is not common within most organizations and one
should not assume that just anyone will do.
That is not to say that we should be biased against anyone, but it takes
years or experience to be a leader. Thus, most organizations “resist delegating
authority to employees who are not ready to handle it, or who don’t, for their own
reasons, want to” (Forrester, 2000, Pg. 70).
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