Be Our Own Authority

The patriarchal contract places the focus of control outside the individual, which has the opposite effect of what we as managers want. In the entrepreneurial way of thinking, our most valued subordinates are those who take most responsibility for the unit.

If we ask people to take responsibility for their own actions and their own unit and to create an organization of their own choosing, then we push decisions down. Our basic contract is that the employees are the ultimate source of authority on what actions will best serve this business. This means that we as managers have to give up some of our control, deemphasize the power we have over people under us, and acknowledge that while the captain may choose direction, the engine room drives the ship.

Although we may give up some control, to follow this path is not to give up structure or different levels in the hierarchy. The pyramid still functions in a positive way to keep us focused on purpose and goals and to give us some structure within which to operate. The contract between the employee and the organization in effect states that the employees are responsible for their own actions and the success of their unit or their project. We constantly look for ways to communicate that people are here to make their own choices about what's best for this business.

If we are serious about contracting for internal authority, here are some things we might do.

1. If we want to begin with a radical act, show the organization with the pyramid turned upside down. Put the people at the lowest level of your unit at the top; put yourself at the bottom. The concept expresses the intent that management's primary purpose is to support the people who support the customer.

   

   Inverted Pyramid

2. If turning the organization upside down is too big a leap, flatten it out. The extreme example of a bureaucratic organization would be to have a series of levels with each person having one subordinate.

   

   Top-Heavy Structure

   A way to communicate that the success of the organization rests on each person's shoulders is to create a flat structure. Instead of a pyramid, use a pancake as the model for the unit.

   

   Pancake Structure

   Returning for a moment to the effort at First National Stores, we finally decided that no amount of training or job redefinition would get the district manager off the store manager's back. Instead, the company gave each district manager 40 stores rather than the usual 13. With 13 stores, the district manager was physically able to visit each store one or two times a week. With 40 stores, the district manager could visit 15 stores a week. That left at least 25 stores free to manage themselves each week.

   Each organization has its own mythology about how many subordinates one supervisor can manage. Generally, 15 to 18 is thought to be too many subordinates. Most sources estimate that 5 to 8 may be about right. Limiting the number of subordinates makes sense only if the job of the supervisor is primarily to maintain control. When the job of the superior is to push control down so that people become their own authority, who knows what the limits of span of control are?

   There is, of course, a limit to how flat the pancake can be. The nature of the task being performed does make a big difference. More complex, technical, and volatile jobs need the support and teaching that a smaller group and greater supervisory involvement can provide. Also, when supervision is taken away, a greater investment in the development of the subordinates needs to be made. The point, however, is to let the organization structure express our intention to demand that people act on their own internal authority.

3. Change the ground rules about when a supervisor supervises. Let the role of the supervisor be consultative and by invitation only. The subordinates decide when to involve their supervisor. To the supervisor, this may feel like anarchy, but if a subordinate has clear goals and accountability, it works. It is another way to affirm that authority comes from within.
4. Balance the performance appraisal process. It's not easy to play God, so why not stop trying? Let each person be responsible for conducting two appraisals: his or her own and the appraisal of the person he or she works for. For example, as a subordinate I evaluate how I have done in meeting my goals and also assess my supervisor on how well she has done in supporting me and in reaching her own goals. This would serve to balance out the power a little bit and express the belief that I and my supervisor have a common interest in each other's success. The other option is to eliminate it altogether. Replace it with peers making commitments to each other and reviewing how they are doing every few months.
5. Introduce self-managing teams. Self-managing teams have been tried in many places with great success.^* Basically the team, not the supervisor, is responsible for selecting people, scheduling, assignments, equipment purchases, and quality control. The supervisor, whose title is sometimes changed to area manager, is responsible for defining output requirements and negotiating with the rest of the organization for the resources the team needs.
6. Encourage team members to initiate and lead meetings. Staff meetings are the family dinnertime of organizational life. They have symbolic significance because they may be the only time that everyone in the unit is in a room together. The norms and process of the staff meeting influence our attitude about the unit to a far greater extent than simply the subject matter at hand. Let the convening, structuring, and managing of the staff meeting be everyone's responsibility. This is true even if the meetings are long distance and electronic.
7. See that assignments become a two-way contract. Traditionally, assignments are given by the boss; the subordinates ask questions for clarification, and off they go to do the work. In this process the wants of only one of the parties, the boss, are being expressed. Work is done most effectively through social contracts in which the wants of both parties get expressed. This has the boss say, “Here is what I want from you; now tell me what you want from me.” Simple––but it captures the spirit.

These are just a few of the actions that would express the intention that creating an empowering culture is good for the business. Most of us are in some ways already working in that direction. Ideally we want this intention to run throughout everything that we do. Too often we treat people as partners in the morning but turn around and treat them as children in the afternoon.

Encourage Self-Expression

The second element of an entrepreneurial contract has to do with self-restraint and self-expression. The patriarchal belief is that self-restraint is essential to building a strong organization. That how people feel doesn't matter, that this is not a place for touchy/feely stuff. Feelings and subjectivity have no place in the rational realm of organizational life.

The price we pay for this attitude is that we put a cap on the well of people's motivation, passion, and caring about the organization. The reality is that all business is personal and people care deeply about their jobs and the other people around them. We all need to feel supported in our self-expression, in trusting our intuition, and in accepting the emotional side of our existence. When we deny self-expression, systems tend to be flat, gray, and lacking in passion and excitement.

An entrepreneurial organization is designed to create a setting in which people put passion, energy, excitement, and motivation into their work. More times than we'd like to admit, managers talk about lighting a fire under their employees. As if motivating people were a special task of management. It is not. People have within them the capacity to want to be self-motivated. The managerial task is to support this occurring. Organizations are too complicated to be totally predictable and to operate on plan. What we want is people who can adapt to unpredictable situations, to the nonroutine, to unique demands of their customers, and to react with energy and motivation and the organization's interest at heart. This requires access to intuition. It requires listening to how people are feeling about what they're doing.

To put into words how we feel about what's happening at work with regard to projects and people is an act of taking responsibility for who we are, what we stand for, and our own experience. There is no point at which people take more responsibility for their lives and their actions than when they put into words their own wants and their own feelings. Those two issues are at the center of motivation, at the center of responsibility, focus, and action. There is nothing a manager can do to support an entrepreneurial attitude with more impact than simply to ask people two questions: “What do you want?” and “How are you feeling?” These both respond to people's need to feel that their actions are critical to our success.

The fear we have of encouraging self-expression is that ultimately the organization will become one large complaint and therapy group. People will spend their time simply talking about how they feel without really committing themselves to positive action. When we go from a culture that supports no self-expression to one that supports high self-expression there will be a bumpy transition period. There is no question that after being denied expression, people will overdo the time and energy spent in talking about feelings, intuition, and the subjective parts of their work. The price we pay for encouraging self-expression is lower short-term efficiency. It takes more time; it seems on the surface less focused and controlled. The payoff is the higher level of motivation, energy, and commitment that each person brings to the job.

Another frustration in encouraging self-expression is that when we ask people how they are feeling, many of them don't know. Our culture, our upbringing, our schooling have so encouraged the suppression of feelings that if we say to some people, “How do you feel?” the answer is––silence. Or we get back a series of intellectualized ideas about what they think is happening outside themselves. One of the unique qualities we want to bring to work is a general facility in knowing and articulating our own feelings and experience. Most organizational cultures view this as a weakness. We should be viewing access to feelings as a corporate asset and support it in all employees.

There is inevitably a period of struggle, and in some cases of failure, in asking an organization to support self-expression as a way of doing business. No system is going to work for all people, so why not create a culture that supports the best of what we want from people rather than creating a culture that responds to those people who keep the lid tightly closed?

Developing actions that encourage self-expression requires a decision to ask people how they feel and the patience to listen to their response. Suspend our instinct to fix people. This means we need to acknowledge the existence of their feelings without having to agree or disagree with them. It is difficult to listen to people who work for us express frustrations about things when those frustrations are not what we intended and are so different from our own experience. We just have to keep telling ourselves not to take it personally and that there is nothing to defend.

In addition to asking people how they feel and listening better, we could take two other steps to reinforce the self-expression element of the entrepreneurial contract.

1. Devote 25 percent of each meeting to issues of attitude, morale, and motivation. Often we have the intention of using a portion of meetings to discuss how things are going, but we put it last on the agenda and never really get to it. So, do it first. A simple structure for encouraging expression is to ask the people attending the meeting to think over the past two months and identify things that have made them proud and things that they are sorry about. The goal is to bring these discussions out of the breaks, car pools, cocktail lounges, and lunchrooms and into the meetings and “business” discussions. Doing this both legitimizes self-expression and ensures that the right people are in the room to hear.
2. Try a do-it-yourself attitude survey. The most common method of examining feelings is through an attitude survey. While such surveys can be useful for bringing feelings to the surface, they have some limitations when used in traditional ways. Surveys are traditionally taken by either third-party interviews or questionnaires. Questionnaire results are comforting because they have numbers, which give the illusion of objectivity and measurement. Third-party interviews have similar benefits, but the problem with both is that it is hard to know how to act on the results. At best, third-party surveys form the basis for a useful discussion between boss and subordinate. Why not simply have the discussion to begin with by asking the supervisors to do the interviews themselves? The argument against this is that you lose confidentiality. But that is the very purpose of the survey––to eliminate the need for secrecy and caution. The first or second time you ask your subordinates how things are going, they might not trust you enough to give an honest answer, but if you keep asking, eventually they will believe that you want to hear and tell you. The whole idea is to make these more intimate and personal conversations a normal way of doing business and not a special once-a-year thing.

These simple steps may seem a far distance from the hard-nosed political skills you might have expected to find in this book, but they are political acts because they go against the culture that most of us are accustomed to operating in. They are acts of advocacy for an alternative to the patriarchal contract. Supporting self-expression is a way of creating a self-correcting mechanism against actions that occur but are not in the best interest of the people or the organization. Encouraging the expression of feelings is also a way of letting people know that the messenger may be frowned at, but will not be shot.

Make Commitments

The third element of the entrepreneurial contract is to demand commitment instead of sacrifice. To make a commitment to something is to say, “I'm going to do what I believe in, what I want to do, and I commit to doing it out of my own choice.” We too often make sacrifices in response to external demands and justify our actions by the statement that we have to. The essence of a contract of sacrifice is to do what we are obligated to do and the constant use of the words have to.

The alternative is to talk about what we want to do. When we ask people to make choices and to take responsibility for their actions, they are required to state their own wants. We ask for no favors, no sacrifice. To ask for a favor is to say, “I want you to do something I know you don't want to do, but please do it for my sake.” We are asking at that moment for others to base their actions on external motivation. This leads to the dependent mind-set. To create an organization that values choice and interdependence we ask people to choose, to express their wants directly and simply. We ask them to make commitments to what they're doing, and we say that if this is not something they want to do, then we need to keep talking about it.

Committing ourselves and doing what we want to do is not an act of self-indulgence or entitlement. Again, we have to believe that people care about the organization, they're committed to its goals and purpose, and their deepest wish is to contribute something meaningful. If we believe our employees want this organization to succeed, there is reason to ask them to join in owning the act of creating the culture. This comes from the conversations of commitment.

There is still room for acting out of obligation. Life is like that. There is no question that people do work for a living and there are times we have to do things that we would rather not do, but it is still possible for us to make the choice and make the commitment to engage in unpleasant, boring, routine, or painful tasks because we know they are there for a good purpose and serve a larger goal. The fear we have in giving up sacrifice and encouraging people to do what they're committed to do is that people will go off in every direction and will not hold the organization's interest at heart. This is one projection about human nature.

We can also decide that people want to care about the larger purpose, and want to be useful. Believing this, we can ask people seriously to think about what they wanted to commit to. An internally generated act of choice and commitment results in people feeling much more responsible for outcomes. There is no pressure more powerful than that which comes from within. Our task as managers is to encourage people to make demands on themselves.

The other price we pay for demanding sacrifices is that when we sacrifice we expect something in return. An act of sacrifice creates obligations on the manager that then become a hidden bargain. The statement is, “I'll sacrifice for you now, but you better take care of me later.” Resentment runs deep in the person who has made a sacrifice when he or she realizes at a later date that the sacrifice was supposed to have been made for its own sake and its own reward. When we ask people to make commitments and to choose, they do it for the present. No hidden bargains, no obligations. The act of making a commitment gives meaning to what people are doing. A commitment provides its own reward. Unless you are a masochist, sacrifice depends on a later reward that often never comes.

The empowerment choice, at its center, is a choice to bet the farm. There is no way in the world that a person acting out of a sense of duty and sacrifice will find the strength to take the risky path. The only justification for taking a risk and creating an organization of your own choosing is to do it out of a commitment to something you believe in. It is, in a sense, something that you have to do. But the “have to do” comes from inside, not outside. Asking people to take risks because it's their duty, or it's good for some people other than themselves, is asking too much, and it doesn't work.

Finally, focusing on a culture of commitment rather than sacrifice confronts the feeling of fear and helplessness that is present in too many workplaces. Stating our wants, taking responsibility, and committing ourselves—this is how we overcome a sense of helplessness. Often we do not get what we want, but in a sense it doesn't matter. Helplessness and low-energy sacrifice come from the unfinished business of not having taken a stance and made the statement of what we wanted. We empower ourselves and those around us by compulsively asking the question, “If this is what we have to get done, what do you want from me and others to make it happen?”

Here are some specific things we can do to help replace sacrifice with commitment.

1. At the simplest level, stay focused on what we and those around us want. This is particularly helpful in meetings where a fog has settled over the discussion. Fog occurs when we get caught up in discussing the history, defending ourselves, blaming others, and getting too involved in details. Asking the question, “What do you want?” slices through the fog. If people do not know what they want, then ask the question, “If you did know what you wanted, what would it be?”
2. Act in ways that give others ownership. We commit to that which we own. Sacrifice is a process of disowning. When we sacrifice we give up a part of ourselves, or disown ourselves. We create ownership/commitment when we give others freedom to choose their own path to achieving results, and structure work so that people are doing a whole job instead of a piece of a job.
3. Discourage and confront passive, nonassertive behavior. Passive behavior is an extreme form of withholding. It is the inevitable product of patriarchy. Passive people remain silent as a strategy for getting what they want. Passive behavior often has the effect of making us feel either guilty or sorry for quiet people. We have to keep reminding ourselves that passivity is political, a goal-seeking stance, and that other people are nowhere near as vulnerable as they appear.
4. Create a vision of greatness and possibility for ourselves and ask our subordinates to do the same––greatness and possibility for individuals and for our team. Creating a vision of greatness will be dealt with in Chapter 5, but for now it is enough to know that we claim ownership over our lives when we identify the future that we want for ourselves and our unit. Our deepest commitment is to choose to live, to choose the destiny that has been handed to us, and to choose to pursue that destiny. These choices are expressed at work when we create a vision for our unit and decide to pursue that vision at all costs.

In a sense, this list of steps doesn't do justice to the issue of commitment. In fact, building ownership or commitment is what this whole book is about. The steps do, however, present clues as to where to focus our attention.

Act on Our Interdependence

We are interdependent and relational creatures. We do nothing alone. To realize our vision of greatness and possibility, we need the support of those around us. Users and suppliers need our unit, bosses need subordinates, and colleagues need peers. The need for interdependence and cooperation is ideally expressed by the idea that we are all partners in creating this business. Mars food and beverage company has always called their employees “associates” as a way of expressing the sentiment that they are all in it together, roughly as equals. Their dominant value is mutuality. Moving toward an entrepreneurial contract and a definition of self-interest as contribution and integrity calls for us to act as equals even when we deal with those above us. Empowerment means putting our survival in our own hands and requires that we act as interdependent partners in each encounter, a theme we will touch on again in Chapter 7.

Believe That These Elements Are Just

Believing that these elements of an entrepreneurial contract are just is to believe that real authority comes from within and with peers. That self-expression and commitment are good for the business. We decide to build an organization based on a positive view of human nature. The belief that strong external authority, self-denial, and sacrifice are good for the business is a more shadowy view of human nature, most often going under the claim of “reality.” The view we take is really a choice each of us individually makes since there is plenty of evidence to support both positions. Evil does exist in the world, and people, including ourselves, often do choose personal gain over what is good for the community. At the same time, we have the experience of seeing people choose what is good for the organization, even at their own expense. We adopt a view of what is possible on the basis of our own free will, not because someone forces us. Given the two sets of data, why not create an entrepreneurial contract with our employees? We will pay a price for yielding some authority, listening to feelings, and coping with what people want to do, but we pay a price for any contract we negotiate.

Many of us are quite willing to give entrepreneurial choice to our top performers. We give them more authority, self-expression, and freedom. We expect less from our average performers, and that is what we get. Demanding that each employee take responsibility for the business would, over time, create a culture of higher performers. The entrepreneurial contract makes very difficult demands on people—demands that bureaucratic employees will find hard to live with. People who do not want to take responsibility will find ways to avoid it, but let them find that somewhere else. If we want to choose a bureaucratic path and be political in the traditional way, there are lots of places to go. It takes an act of faith for us to decide that it is possible for us to create a unique culture in our own unit.

Meaning

We decide that we will engage in activities that have meaning to us and are genuinely needed. We pay as much attention to purpose as to process. Our unit does those things that express our values about what we have to contribute to the organization. We stop engaging in activities designed to defend ourselves, to explain ourselves, and to go into the history of how we got here. We minimize efforts designed to control people who are controlling others, efforts designed to position and reposition, to promote, and to rationalize. No more detailed strategies on whom to meet with and when. We decide not to engage in all activities that are synonymous with a protective, careful, cautious culture. We cast our fate to the wind and do the things that have meaning and depth and substance for our unit, even if we think they may not win approval or blessings from those around us. We commit to the pursuit of substance over form.

Contribution and Service

We decide to do the things that we feel genuinely contribute to the organization and its purpose. Each unit has its own unique contribution to make to the business, and the people in it have their own unique contributions to make to the unit. Our self-interest is best served when we're focused on contributing the things that are of unique value to the business. If they do not serve the business, if they do not serve the users and customers of our department, then we decide not to do them. We reduce the time we spend on oversight and hiring consultants to prove a point we have already decided upon. We focus on a service orientation, giving away everything we have to give and holding onto as little as possible. When it comes to information, we want to share as much as possible, and if we have to decide whether to act in a way that makes our own unit look good as opposed to another unit, we choose to make the other unit look good.

We treat this business as if it were our own. If it were our own business, we would not want rivalry, competition, and undermining actions among the units working for us. If it were our own business, we wouldn't want people doing things just to look good; we would want people doing things because they had meaning for the business and served their users. The service orientation treats the other units inside the business as our customers, and we don't mess around with our customers for long. In many organizations other units are treated as adversaries. For example, typically, the research organization sees marketing and manufacturing as being somewhat unreasonable and difficult to deal with. Marketing people see manufacturing and research in rather negative terms. They see manufacturing as inflexible and unresponsive. Marketing sees research as taking too long and being self-indulgent in its wish for excellence, elegance, and discovery. Manufacturing, in turn, thinks research does not know how to design a product at a reasonable cost and in a predictable way. Manufacturing tends to see marketing as being wishy-washy, unable either to make up its mind or to hold onto a position long enough to be profitable.

All of these attitudes are common in every organization and to some extent inevitable. It doesn't matter whether you are a business, a hospital, a church, or a school. We want a certain amount of tension between functions––we want them to see the world in different ways. Each function is an advocate for the integrity of its own activity, and that has to lead to some amount of conflict. Underneath conflict, though, we need the orientation that each unit is there to serve the others, as partners. Marketing in a sense becomes the customer of manufacturing and research. Research sees manufacturing and marketing as its customers and has the orientation that it exists to serve its customers and contribute something unique to them. The central office of a school system sees each building as a partner, even customer, rather than the other way around. Seeing other units as our customers forces us to give priority to their requirements.

When we focus on contribution and service, it allows us to let go of the struggles for control and territory that are so common. The greatest frustration of living inside a bureaucratic organization is that we can see no clear path to contributing something of real value to the organization. This is a kind of helplessness that runs deeper than having people above us insensitive to our wants and needs.

Integrity

All of us have the fear, conscious or unconscious, that we cannot maintain our integrity and still be valued and successful. We have the feeling that if we stand up, we'll be shot. There is a widespread belief that if we deliver bad news, it will be our last act and that what was true for the Greeks will be true for us––people shoot the messenger.

To maintain our integrity in the organization essentially means to put into words what we see happening, to tell people what is really going on within our unit and what we see going on outside our unit. Integrity isn't a moral issue; it's not a question of fraud or legally dishonest acts. It is more the issue of whether it is possible for us to tell the truth about what we see happening, to make only those promises that we can deliver on, to admit to our mistakes, and to have the feeling that the authentic act is always the best for the business.

Acting with integrity goes against a myth that dominates organizations. Every organization has a story about someone who stood up and was shot, of some individual who took a strong stand in line with deeply held personal beliefs and was downsized for the act of taking that stand. Try to research who the person was, what the stand was, when the event happened, and who fired the shot. Often it's very hard to find out these things. The person who got shot somehow is unnameable, the event always happened four or five years ago, and nobody that you talk to was actually in the room. But the conviction remains that around this place, if you stand up and tell people what's really going on, you'll be shot.

The irony is that the generals are as imprisoned by the myth as the soldiers. As a manager, it's very hard to find out exactly what's going on. You get so many different stories you never know what is real, and when people report to you on projects and events, you're never sure whether they're describing what's really happening or whether they're positioning their statements to you in a way that proclaims their own innocence.

When we choose integrity as absolutely being in our self-interest, we go against the myths about the slain bodies of our comrades. This does not mean that choosing integrity brings a guarantee of safe passage. People do get fired. Early in this book you read the story of Allan, who had seemingly successfully created an entrepreneurial division in the midst of a high-control environment. He had essentially met his sales and profit goals and yet found himself unexpectedly on the job market. At first glance it appears that his corporate deviance led to his demise. After talking at length with him and people around him it seems that it was the arrogance and aggressiveness with which he pursued his vision rather than the uniqueness of the vision itself that got him in trouble. Allan's strength was his courage and single-mindedness in pursuing his vision of an entrepreneurial organization. His vulnerability was his aggressive behavior and disdain for those who chose another path. The conventional stereotype of the entrepreneur is someone who will pursue a business opportunity with the heart of a champion but who has the interpersonal skills of a wild boar. We risk getting shot when we claim our integrity at the expense of others. We tell the world that we are taking a stand on something that we believe in, but we do it in a way that puts other people down. Our self-interest is best served when we hold onto our integrity and do it in a way that does not discount those around us.

The ultimate argument against being more direct and clear with those around us it that the cost is too high. We each have evidence of some time we were more direct, even in a nice way, and still got punished. The only answer to that is: Yes, Virginia, organizations are unfair. We do at times get punished for positive acts, but when that happens I always figure I was going to get punished no matter what I did. If I am going to get shot, the bullet probably left the gun some time ago and is already well on its way. The question left to me is what position do I want to be in––standing up or bending over––when the bullet arrives.

Positive Impact on Others' Lives

All of us care deeply about the well-being of our colleagues and the people around us. We each have strong personal beliefs and often religious values about how other people are to be treated. There is something about many workplace environments that allows us to suspend those beliefs in the name of getting something done. There is a great deal of conventional wisdom about not getting too close to the people around us because someday we may have to fire them. There is the belief that we don't want to say anything upsetting to our colleagues because someday we may have to work for them. There is the belief that if we get too close to other people, somehow it will hinder our ability to make objective decisions. In this way of thinking, intimacy and openness with other people are associated with weakness and subjectivity. The dominant fear is that if we get close to other people, it will ruin our objectivity and we will make decisions designed to protect the intimacy of those relationships at the expense of the business.

All of these beliefs are rationalizations for treating people in ways that we don't feel comfortable about. They're based on a very narrow view of what's possible in organizations and what's possible in relationships. On the basis of the view that relationships tend to be rather brittle and are easily broken, there's no room for us to treat others honestly; according to this view, relationships in organizations, especially with the powerful people, have little forgiveness. To the contrary, confronting other people with the reality of what is happening is not an act of violence but an act of compassion. The way we treat people poorly in organizations is mostly by acts of omission and lack of communication. There is the feeling of withholding and caution that we justify by saying, “I don't want to hurt them.” This, in fact, is an act of organizational cruelty. For other people not to know how we feel about their projects or their actions is a withholding, bureaucratic act.

To talk about third parties who are not in the room is not to treat those parties well. There is much more dialogue of a personal nature about people who are not in the room than actual direct communication. That's why performance reviews have been singularly unsuccessful over the years. They demand that, at an appointed hour, people have to really be direct and tell each other how they feel about performance and talk about how the organization feels about them. The depth and quality and intimacy of this conversation go against the norms that dominate the other 364 days of the year. To ask people to behave this way once a year is asking too much.

The other dimension of having a positive impact on other people's lives has to do with the nature of the products and services that we're offering. As a function, we need to decide what services are of genuine value to other people and become a user- or customer-driven function. If the service or product of my unit is not one that I feel is genuinely helpful or has a positive effect on the people using it, then it's something that I should stop offering. Auditing, policing, and enforcing policy can be major forms of inflicting damage on other people in the organization. People in the staff role feel that top management is their real client. They work as the agents of top management in the name of their stewardship function. Staff people get involved in judging people, evaluating activities, making recommendations, and generally acting in a policing capacity. The policing is useful only to the extent that the people receiving the policing, the objects of scrutiny, are requesting that service. The only time auditing, policing, and evaluating treat people well and positively is when those being audited and policed actually support that kind of attention.

Auditors who move into an organization at the request of top management are really, in effect, letting their own top management off the hook. The staff-auditing or policy-enforcement group is doing the dirty work for the top management that wants to keep its hands clean. Much of the disservice done to other people is done in the name of top management or done in the name of what's good for the business. It is always a sign that what you are doing goes against your own beliefs when you hear yourself rationalizing it for the sake of someone or something that's not in the room.

Mastery

There's a pride and satisfaction in understanding your function better than anyone else and better than even you thought possible. One of the fastest ways to get out of a bureaucratic cycle is to have as your goal to learn as much as you can about what you're doing. Learning and performance are intimately related; the high performers are those who learn most quickly.

Performing a function simply for its own sake always serves your best self-interest. Performing a function because it's dirty work that has to be done, and somebody has to do it, is a sign that what you're doing may not be worth the effort. This final element of enlightened self-interest involves doing those things that would allow you to be the best and let that be its own reward. To learn something or perform something simply because somebody else wants you to do it is always a feeble motivation and marginally rewarding activity.

The Payoff

The powerful thing about this definition of enlightened self-interest is that it puts our work and our sense of purpose and empowerment under our control. To pursue mastery, meaning, contribution, integrity, and service is to take a path that does not require the approval or applause of our supervisor. It is the only way to discover and claim our own autonomy, even in the midst of a dependency-creating organization. If I define self-interest only as those things that win the approval or are under the control of other people, I am dictating a dependent lifestyle for myself. Contribution, service, meaning, integrity, and touching other people in a positive way are all things I can do on my own.

To ask people to let go of their intense ambition to move up the organization, give up their desire for wider responsibility and more corporate jewelry, is a fierce demand. There is nothing more difficult in the creation of an entrepreneurial organization than to ask people to let go of these historical, popular, and well-reinforced ambitions. The organization has designed a thousand ways to encourage people to define self-interest as moving up. The culture defines success in terms of status and trappings and jewelry and boats and trips and all the physical things that are supposed to help us feel good about ourselves.

The literature of business has a strong implication that happiness is only found at the top. The business schools teach business only from the perspective of being the CEO or the chief financial or marketing or personnel officer. The implication is that these are the only jobs that are really connected with success. In the name of creating an entrepreneurial culture, we ask people to turn at least sideways away from this definition of self-interest and to focus on their unit as if it's their own business. The downside of having your own business is that you have no place to go. There is no career development for people at the top of an independent business. To be entrepreneurial in the midst of an organization is to proceed as if your career development is secondary and to stay focused on your product and service, and on the way it is delivered. This is a radical demand but one that's absolutely essential.

One of the problems with choosing enlightened self-interest over advancement is that it is a long-run strategy and we tend to live for today. The dominant norm of most organizations is to talk about the long run and act on the short run. To define self-interest as moving ahead is a short-run orientation, and organizations are filled with short runs. Actions that have long-run benefits are much less visible. To be entrepreneurial and political in a positive way means we have to feel we're in it for the long run. What we do for the short run, in fact, can guarantee a very short run. A short run is always used as a rationalization for doing something that we don't believe in.

One more argument in favor of enlightened self-interest. A dominant myth is that our career progression is directly linked with our performance. We all have the wish that if we perform well and live by the rules, we'll be acknowledged and rewarded. The real world is not so simple or direct. Our movement up through the organization, in reality, takes on much more of a random pattern than simply good reward for good performance. There are times when we're working very productively and nobody knows it and other times when we're limping along and are recognized. Our supervisors rotate every year or two, so we are constantly starting over, and who knows what our new boss will look for and want from us.

Say No When We Mean No

Instead of hedging our position for fear of being disapproved of, we make it a point to let others know where we stand. No more corporate fogging by “touching base,” “having too little budget,” “requesting further study,” or saying that something is a good idea, but the timing isn't right. No more committing to schedules we know we can't meet or promising a level of quality or cost that we know we cannot deliver. Most of us have a fear of saying no, thinking we might be seen as uncooperative or uncommitted. It is a risk we need to take. Too much money is wasted and too many expectations are violated when we are reluctant to take a stand early in a project. Our role models should be six-year-olds. They talk straight. They agree, they disagree, they like, they hate, they say yes, they say no. Period. After age six, our education, life experience, and general sophistication teach us to be cautious about communicating our real intent. If we feel that we cannot say no, then our yesses don't mean anything.

Share as Much Information as Possible

Sharing as much information as possible is the opposite of the military notion that only those who “need to know” should be informed. Our goal is to let people know of our plans, ideas, and changes as soon as possible. When we are thinking of reorganizing, we tell people right away instead of waiting until the plan is fully formulated. If a project is running behind schedule, we tell end users we are behind. Most supervisors think part of their role is to shield their subordinates from bad news coming from above. When we shield people we are acting as their parents and treating them like children. If we are trying to create the mind-set that everyone is responsible for the success of the enterprise, then people need complete information. We need to think of subordinates and bosses as partners rather than as children or parents. Most of us know that if we withheld information from a partner, we would be putting the relationship at risk. Why not treat those above and below us, even our customers, the same way we would treat our partners? Sounds pretty reasonable and straightforward. If we really decide to act on this philosophy, here are some things we can start doing in a number of areas.

Use Language that Describes Reality

The third way to be authentic in our organizational transactions is to use language that describes reality rather than masking it. We not only want to be open about events and plans, but we want to share them in a way that the message gets through. If we are forced to lay off or fire people, we tell them they are being laid off. We don't talk about downsizing, deselecting, restacking, dislodging, or career reevaluation opportunities.

No one likes cutbacks. We all want to be a part of a growing business in which there are more openings than people to fill them. With technology, consolidation, and automation, most workplaces are shrinking and that trend is with us permanently. If we are cutting by 20 percent, we tell people we are cutting. When possible, we ask people to help us figure out how to cut back. They can often find ways to reduce costs short of firing people. When possible, we also avoid making flat 20 percent across the board cuts, which just punish the managers who have already brought their costs into line. Basically, we tell people in unmistakable terms where we stand and why we need to take the action we are taking. If we think that we cannot tell people the real reason why we are cutting back because they wouldn't take it well, maybe we should reevaluate that reason.

When we are disappointed in people's actions, we tell them just that: “I am disappointed in you for these reasons.” Plain and simple. No more telling others we are giving them negative feedback because we think it will be helpful to them in their future development.

Avoid Repositioning for the Sake of Acceptance

In an effort to build support, we take great pains to justify our work in terms of the popular issue of the moment. We want to look as if we are swimming with the stream. In lean times, everything we do is justified on the basis that it will cut costs and streamline our function. In good times we claim our ideas will help the business grow. A good example of this occurs in the field of management training. There are certain constants in this arena: Managers are taught to be goal directed, set clear objectives, be more participative, and in general treat people well. The way that we describe the training, though, changes with the shifting tide. A while ago, programs were called relationship improvement programs; then essentially the same programs were called productivity programs; then they were called corporate culture programs. We are into visionary leadership programs and perhaps even positive political skills programs. A distorted marketing mentality leads us to sell our projects on the basis of the popular problem of the moment. It is a commitment to form over substance. Instead of changing the way we do business, we change the way we talk about the way we do business.

Positioning and tying our project to the coattails of what is hot ultimately hurts our credibility and our function. As people begin to find out that what they heard was not what they got, they feel used. Our cleverness always becomes our undoing. The positive political act is not to engage in fads, even if doing so would help us sell our project. We tell our customers exactly what they are getting. We tell top management exactly what our project is about. We engage employees in creating the future, rather than rolling out another training program. No public relations in the rah-rah sense, no repositioning just for the sake of selling our ideas. People need to hear both sides of our story—our certainty and our doubt.

The entrepreneurial cycle is the underlying belief system required for an empowered way of operating. Its conception of the entrepreneurial contract, enlightened self-interest, and non-manipulative tactics becomes the basis for nurturing autonomy over dependency, interdependence over rivalry. It is not possible to overlay positive political actions on top of patriarchy, self-centeredness, and manipulation. Autonomy with compassion is the essential condition for empowering ourselves and those around us. Empowerment and positive politics become one and the same.