The Myth of Empowerment

Empowerment sounds like a good thing. The Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary defines it thusly:

empower, verb (T), to give someone official authority or the freedom to do something

How could gaining authority, official authority no less, be bad? What could be wrong with getting freedom? Isn't that what we all want? Sure, except that is not what the empowerment craze became.

I was there. It was the mid-late 80s, and the new buzzword, empowerment, swept the boardrooms of corporate America (to a lesser extent Europe: Europeans are normally late to get involved and early to give up, but that is another post). Dressed in consultant garb, power tie and suspenders, I listened to many an executive speak like this, that:

We need to empower our staff. You need to find a way to free them, to let them grow. You have to unlock their hidden potential.

Or words like that. Mom and apple pie, how could I disagree? I nodded intelligently--s/he was the client after all--while wondering what I was supposed to free the staff from? What were they supposed to grow into? Just how was I supposed to turn the cocooned staff into butterflies flying free?

Ah, but those are the gritty details, words and realities that rarely disturb boardrooms and corner offices. In hindsight it was just like W's inner circle, not bothered by "realities" of Iraq, terror, Katrina or ... governing in general. I digress.

What happened was each level of management used "empowerment" as a way to sluff off jobs onto the layers below. In earlier times, or among those with a respect for the English language, it would be called delegation, defined as

delegate, verb (T), to give a particular job, duty, right etc. to someone else so that they do it for you

Note the difference: nothing about some vague "freedom" but very clear about "do it for you." And that is what happened (and happens)--managers "delegate" tasks/responsibilities but call it "empowerment," like it is a bonus or boon to the poor person now saddled with the extra responsibility.

Well, why is this bad? What is wrong with "stretch goals," with asking more from someone so s/he is forced to summon the inner strengths that until-then lay hidden? Nothing. I quite believe in stretch goals, and thank Socrates (via Plato of course) for his dictum that necessity is the mother of invention.

So, what is wrong? Let's say I want my 16-year old daughter (when she turns 16 that is) to drive across Canada in one week. That is freedom. It is also a stretch goal.

The goal presupposes a number of pre-existing conditions though, that, oh, she has a driver's license would be a good start. That she has a dependable car. Enough money for gas. Oh, and say more than a week's worth of driving experience. Without such "resources" at her disposal my request is dangerous and irresponsible. And probably impossible to acvhieve, no matter how "necessary" the drive is.

Back to Dick and Acme. The idea for this post came from our discussion about the mass hiring he did/is doing/will do. Of course hiring begins with the resume, but, as Dick says, "learning to read Indian resumes is an art," an issue again for another post. Once culled, interviewed and hired, now what? How do you identify the ones you want to keep?

By giving them rope and seeing if they hang themselves (what Pop might have said). Use the skills they say they have and "empower" them to perform tasks they should be comfortable with, and measure the results.

Back to family: my daughter says she can drive so I give her the keys. If she hits a tree backing out of the driveway, well, maybe she padded her resume. Just like the now-identified Indian new hires who could not complete the tasks. You then let them go, invest in training or give them a new, usually lessor, position.

Like me, Dick also suffered through the "empowerment" craze, but from the inside, being the one often being "empowered." He survived, but then he is also trying to start a global company from the get-go.