CHAPTER 10
Empower This!
We’ve got to take out the boss element.
—Jack Welch, former CEO, General Electric
The Etymology of a Buzzword
In a speech that I originally gave in New York in August 1979, I used a word that I had never before heard used within the context of employee relations. Yet over the past three decades, the use of that same word in the business lexicon has reached virus-like proportions. In the process, the term has taken on a life (and many new definitions) of its own. Sadly, as is often the case with any product, image, or even an humble word that somehow makes the journey from obscurity to ubiquity, we see entire books, seminars, podcasts, lectures, T-shirts, and ball caps devoted to it. There’s nothing wrong with that—except perhaps for the fact that with every mindless repetition, its meaning gets hopelessly muddled, if not lost altogether. That word is empowered.
The reason for discussing empowerment now is even more crucial than it was back then. While everyone rushes around doing whatever they do to “empower” their people, many are proceeding entirely in the wrong direction. And if you think about it, you might realize that your people may not really need empowering at all. After all, they know how to find their way to work, what their jobs are, and probably the best ways of doing them.
Management professor Henry Mintzberg offers perhaps the best analogy when he tells us to consider a truly advanced social system: the beehive. Queen bees don’t empower worker bees. The worker bees are “adults” who know exactly what they have to do. Indeed, the queen bee has no role in the genuinely strategic decisions of the hive, such as the one to move on to a new location. The bees decide collectively, responding to the informative dances of the scouts. What the queen bee does is exude a chemical substance that holds the system together. She is responsible for what has been called the spirit of the hive.1
Similarly, our experience has shown that what most employees really need is for managers to stop standing on their necks long enough to let them do their jobs! In short, what they need is for us to stop disempowering them. And the difference, we assure you, is more than semantic.
Eerily similar to the thesis of this book, a pivotal concept of those remarks back in 1979 was that successful organizations went to truly great lengths to ensure that they were hiring only those who were qualified for the position in question and equipped by virtue of temperament, ideology, and attitude to be successful and content within the organization. After establishing that vital first step, it was then equally important to ensure that these spanking new, highly qualified, and motivated troops knew the organization’s whys and wherefores and were firmly pointed to a target. Crack troops don’t tolerate standing at parade rest or aimless wandering very well. In fact, they become dangerous—both to themselves and those around them.
To be effective, these folks need to be led by managers who understand and skillfully articulate the mission (they’re good with crayons). They must be scrupulously fair; able to tread the line between bullying and being chicken; genuinely care about their people; and, not unlike the queen bee, know that their own principal duty is to support the organization.
Although these prerequisites are vital to building and maintaining a high-performance organization, they are simply not enough. There’s still another step—one that, if not taken, will soon find you facing a bunch of extremely talented, highly motivated, capably led, and very frustrated people.
The Next Step
We’ve got to make sure our people are totally and completely equipped to do their jobs. Then—and only then—can we get ourselves (and the organization) out of their way. Stand aside and let them work!
The good news is that—contrary to what many currently popular books and seminars espouse—this is not something you do to your people, and it’s certainly not something you can achieve on command. The bad news, as so many organizations have learned, is that you really do have to do it—fully, completely, and without equivocation or you’ll regret it later. You can’t just talk about it or “kinda” do it. You either do it or you don’t.
We’re not suggesting that getting people to assume additional responsibility is altogether easy. It’s not. Some folks like being told what to do—and not just those in the lower echelons. But the real problem is that too many managers enjoy satisfying that wish. And because they enjoy it, they’re good at it. They start by hiring people who need to be told what to do, and then tell them in every way imaginable that they don’t want them to think for themselves or take responsibility. Requiring people to be accountable for their work and allowing them to define and solve problems requires them to amend both their roles and expectations.
Identifying Four Types of Managers
During his legendary and highly successful tenure at the helm of General Electric, Jack Welch—and the others on his executive leadership team—formulated a matrix to describe the full range of managers in the organization. This matrix applies to nearly every other organization we’ve ever encountered. Born of the recognition that the ideals of involvement and excitement and turning people loose didn’t always match the reality of life in GE, the company used this “Four Types of Managers” model throughout Welch’s tenure, which ended in 2001. It successfully helped leaders throughout GE more closely align their leadership styles and practices with the company’s stated values.
The problem, as Welch and his team saw it, was that some of the company’s leaders—including managers at all levels—remained unwilling or unable to abandon big-company, big-shot autocracy and embrace the values that GE was trying to foster. Following is the model—the Four Types—which we’ve adapted here ever so slightly, to put into Contented Cows terms:
GE’s Four Types of Managers
Type I [the Contented Cow] not only delivers on performance commitments but believes in and furthers GE’s small-company values. This group’s trajectory is onward and upward, and the men and women who comprise it will represent the core of our senior leadership into the next century.
Type II [the Slow Milker, Chronic Kicker, or Finicky Eater] does not meet commitments, share our values—or last long at GE.
Type III [the Fence-Breaking Explorer] believes in the values but sometimes misses commitments. We encourage taking swings, and Type III is typically given another chance.
Type IV [the Low-Producing Boss Cow]. The calls on the first two types are easy. Type III takes some judgment; but Type IV is the most difficult. One is always tempted to avoid taking action, because Type IVs deliver short-term results. But they do so without regard to values and, in fact, often diminish them by squeezing, stifling, and grinding people down. Some of these [at GE] learned to change; most couldn’t. The decision to begin removing Type IVs was a watershed—the ultimate test of our ability to walk the talk. However, we had to do it if we wanted GE people to be open, to speak up, to share, and to act boldly outside traditional lines of authority and functional boxes in this new learning, sharing environment.2
One Bad Apple Can Spoil the Whole Barrel
Hundreds, if not thousands, of contenders abound in the wings, waiting to accept the accolades and indeed the full financial rewards associated with Contented Cow stature. But many of these companies fail to progress beyond the “wannabe” stage. This can often be the fault of a few—even just one—of the aforementioned Type IV managers. These few “bad apples” manage to water down—if not completely obliterate—legitimate Contented Cow managers’ efforts.
Look around. Maybe you’re feeling pretty smug about the contentedness of your workforce in general; however, you notice a pocket of your organization with uncharacteristically high turmoil and turnover. It’s possible they’re still making their numbers. But it might be worth taking a closer look.
In more than one company we’ve examined, we’ve seen the valiant efforts of lots of well-intentioned leaders be completely overshadowed by one or two Low-Producing (or even High-Producing) Boss Cows. But because these Type IVs were achieving short-term results—albeit at the expense of people in their areas—it was tough for anyone to summon the courage to do anything about it.
It’s not just the damage these Type IVs do within their own departments. Greater destruction by far occurs elsewhere in the organization, when people see managers tolerating or even encouraging this type of behavior. Their mixed message seems to be: “Our people are our most valuable assets. Really, they are. And our practice is to treat people in ways that will motivate them to stellar performance. We realize we’ve got one or two managers around here who don’t get it. That’s okay, because they’re turning in the needed results right now. If you’re not under their control, don’t worry about them. Just be glad you don’t work for them. If you do happen to work for them . . . well . . . it’s a free world.”
Guess what? That approach just won’t work. The glaring inconsistency involving even just a few will undermine and mitigate the majority’s valiant efforts. Once again, it is an all-or-nothing proposition. You’re either Committed or you aren’t. This isn’t a quest for the moral high ground. It’s just plain good business. Every one of our Contented Cow companies detailed in Chapter 1 works pretty hard to encourage, recognize, and develop the Type Is in their midst and to send the Type IIs and IVs to work somewhere else—preferably for a competitor.
If you discover a couple of these folks in your organization, you owe it to them (and everyone else) to be very clear about your commitment to these principles. If they choose not to sign on, cull them from the herd—now. Do it professionally and humanely, but do it!
Give People Back Their Work
As currently viewed, “empowerment” is something that we bestow upon those whose boxes on the organization chart are south of our own. This plantation mind-set therefore implies that they wouldn’t have this power if we didn’t grant it to them. Contrast that with some situations where the workers truly do have a high degree of influence (control, if you will) over their work and the work environment. Two that come readily to mind are those involving commercial airline pilots and professional basketball players. In both cases, the workers are perfectly well empowered already, with no thanks to either a manager or any sort of “empowerment program.”
January 15, 2009. US Airways flight 1549. Most of us remember the so-called Miracle on the Hudson, in which Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger successfully “landed” the Airbus A320 he was piloting on the surface of the Hudson River after a flock of geese flew into and shut down both of the jet’s engines shortly after takeoff from New York’s LaGuardia Airport. I remember it especially clearly because I happened to be relaxing in LaGuardia’s Delta Sky Club at the moment it happened. As my delayed flight had been scheduled to take off at the precise minute that flight 1549 did take off, it’s never been lost on me that those could have been my geese and Sully wouldn’t have been my pilot.
The success of this feat—in which no one was killed, or even seriously injured—was due in no small part to Sully’s training and skill not only as an Airbus captain but as an experienced glider pilot. But a large measure of the credit has to go to what we’ve been talking about in this chapter. The captain didn’t worry about whether or not he was “empowered” to put the plane down on the river between two bridges and a host of skyscrapers. The cockpit voice recordings make it very clear that he never once tried to contact his boss to ask permission to do so, and he certainly never checked to see if the company had a policy governing this kind of catastrophe. He was enabled by virtue of the job and the attendant responsibility to do whatever it took to save the lives of the 155 passengers.
And can you imagine Los Angeles Lakers coach Mike Brown calling a special practice or a time-out during a game for the purpose of empowering Kobe Bryant to pass the ball, take a shot, or run a different play than the one that had been called? Of course not—and the reason is that whatever empowering is going on took place long ago, when it was “baked” into the person’s job.
By contrast, a position that used to convey considerable latitude but that has been recently disempowered is that of physician. Owing to the emergence of managed, er, mangled, care, physicians find themselves being micromanaged by insurance company bureaucrats who have nowhere near their level of medical training—and have certainly never held a patient’s life in their hands. A 15-minute conversation with your primary care physician will likely confirm that he or she doesn’t like this—and they certainly don’t find that it enhances either business outcomes or the quality of care they are able to provide for patients.
No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en . . .
—William Shakespeare
Chapter Summary
Notes
1. Henry Mintzberg, “Musings on Management,” Harvard Business Review, July/August 1996.
2. GE Annual Reports, 1995–2000.