Empower! to Win: An Action Guide to the Imperative Leadership Style of the 21St Century

By Gene F. Brady Ph.D.

The organizations that survive in this century will have empowered members to be sensitive to competitive forces and to be externally driven to resolve problems on the spot. Only through such empowerment will businesses become fit enough to survive in their industries. Empowerment is a state of being where the employee has been given the resources to do the empowered job; and any disabling constraints have been removed. This book guides the reader up the ladder to successful empowerment while educating the reader on how to address each rung of the ladder that may be an obstacle or an opportunity. This book details how high empowerment interfaces with high motivation to create superb performance for the employee as well as the organization. How motivation becomes a by-product of empowerment, and then contributes to additional empowerment and job performance is detailed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 7, 2009
• ISBN: 9781462835843

Gene F. Brady Ph.D.

Gene F. Brady received his Ph.D. in Business from the University of Oregon. He has held tenured Professor Positions at two major Universities and a Research Fellowship at Yale University. His previous books include Executive Succession and Management by Involvement. His articles have appeared in numerous journals including Strategic Management Journal, Human Relations, and National Association of Corporate Director’s Monthly. His delivered research papers appear in over twenty conference proceedings of the International Academy of Management. Dr. Brady has held a number of senior executive positions in the health care industry. He served as a Lieutenant Colonel in the USAF Medical Service Corp during the Vietnam War. He currently heads his own management consulting firm, and is an Adjunct Professor of Management at Southern Connecticut State University. He resides in East Haven, Connecticut with his wife, Susan and 12 year old daughter, Tiffany.

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Copyright © 2009 by Gene F. Brady, Ph.D.

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Contents

Preface

Chapter 1

WHY EMPOWER?

Chapter 2

USE A SCALPEL, NOT A MACHETE!

Chapter 3

AUTHENTICITY AND TRUST

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

360 DEGREE FEEDBACK

Chapter 6

ARE WE EMPOWERED ALREADY?

Chapter 7

DO I KNOW MY NEW JOB?

Chapter 8

WORK THE GAMUT

Chapter 9

MOTIVATION TO MEET NEEDS

Chapter 10

LINKS IN THE VALVE CHAIN

Preface

Organizations are, indeed, changing. They are going through an evolutionary metamorphous. Sloan’s early GM monstrosity of a hierarchical arrangement is now dead. It served its purpose for a while. The world is now flat, as Friedman puts it. Information technology has leveled the competitive playing field. Now, new skills are needed just to get into the ballgame. Why? The game has become more aggressive. New tools and equipment are being developed daily. The old way of assessing the environment and carefully devising a game plan for adaptation is not enough to cut it anymore. The environment is not something out there beyond; It comes at you fast, furious and unpredictable. Like the highly trained boxer, if you are flexible, agile, can bob and weave, bounce back quickly, and you are empowered, you can handle what comes at you; at least you can handle it better than the big lummox who’s muscles keep getting in the way.

This book is not aimed at reviewing the various organization forms that are emerging to cope with this volatile world. Granted, they are numerous:

•   Bureaucratic firms that eliminate layers of authority by broadening the scope of jobs, thereby putting more expertise and decision-making closer to the customer/client, and expediting the flow of information back and forth to top management.

•   Departmentalizing according to product and customer, and less according to specialization, geography, and the like.

•   Leaders are increasing use of self-managed product teams. They are also increasing the use of cross-functional or project management teams with high leadership support in lieu of traditional hierarchical programs.

•   Leaders are increasing the use of profit centers and cost centers to hold groups accountable and to eliminate waste. They are pulling the plug on such centers that fail to meet break-even targets. In effect, they are creating businesses within a business. Some of these businesses operate autonomously, not just independently, and become quite entrepreneurish, as Gary Pinchot discusses in his book, Intrapreneurship.

•   Amoebic—like organic forms of fluid structures where the primary nerve center has divided and diffused along the periphery (visualize the organization as a big glob) with super sensory capabilities, allowing the firm to detect and react to external stimuli instantly.

•   Organizations that rely heavily on techniques such as Total Quality Management (TQM), Quality of Work Life (QWL), and Quality Circles (QCs) which are systemically based on empowerment ideology.

•   The increase in customer-back organizations, as Harry Dent terms them in his book, Roaring 2000s. Here, individuals or teams work with market niches to offer customized solutions to financial, insurance, investment, and other problems. The individual or teams are businesses and are legally defined as such. Designated specialists behind these customer units are for administrative and functional support. Such units that scan their territories for customers or clients, and their specific needs that might benefit from their wares have been termed browsers.

One item that all these adaptations have in common is the need for lower-level participants to take on new and greater responsibilities; this means jobs continually need to be redesigned. It also means that participants be asked to embrace change. Yet, people resist change even when it is for their own good.

My effort here, then, is not to further expound on how organizations keep changing, but to recognize that they are changing to one form or another in order to cope with new environmental, industrial, and global forces. And, to orchestrate such changes, managers at all levels are needed who can lead through empowerment, that is, we need empowering leadership (EL).

The topic of empowerment in organizations has been batted about in the business communities for decades. But, at no other time in world history has the topic taken on such high interest and monumental importance as it does today. Industries everywhere are trying to fully grasped the concept in the hope that empowerment will provide some solutions to organization survival and competitiveness. Many leaders are enamored by the social desirability of leading through empowering; others, sense that it engenders suggestions of freedom, autonomy, self-efficacy, openness, and certainly, less oppression. Yet, more often than not, they stumble through once they attempt to activate the process, never quite feeling secure that they are doing things right. Or, they may not know where to begin, since there is no valid, holistic algorithm or prototype to define and guide management’s efforts.

To this end, I write this book. How did the idea for the book come about? It was by no means through tongue and cheek or arm chair philosophy. There are empirical roots, although some are indirect or suggestive. Hackman and Lawler developed a model that defines job scope, and explains how enlarged jobs can lead to positive psychology states of mind for job incumbents. But, this happens only if members have strong growth needs, that is, they want to be empowered. If that is the case, then employees who are in a good psychological state of mind are likely to experience high performance. In two research projects I headed, I found that those workers who experienced empowerment in their jobs were most likely to experience job satisfaction, job involvement, organizational commitment, and a lower tendency to voluntarily leave the organization. The studies further revealed that education and professionalism played an important role, thus confirming sociologist, Talcott Parson’s (The Social System) observation in the 50s that the more one’s education costs in time, money and stress, the stronger the need for that person to have the opportunity to use his education. My job here is to pull all this and other supporting evidence together into an easy and palatable model of action that will serve the needs of leaders at all levels.

Supporting participant empowerment is tantamount to tending to a well-nurtured garden. A specialist knows just how to mix certain chemistry and elements so that the garden flourishes and people from all over admire it. As industries differ contextually, so do the climate and soil conditions of gardens in different locales. The challenge in this metaphor is to find the most productive mix of elements particular to an industry, and then to fine-tune the mix to the specific business requirements. EL will not get very far until the firm is readied. The natural question, then, is how do we know what mixture of fertile elements will work best for us? How do we begin, and then gain the momentum to carry the effort through until it really takes hold? I will address these questions as we move along in this book.

But, say for now, we do have a grip on the needed climate. What’s next? The next step is to develop a strong culture. In management lingo this refers to the extent that all members of the enterprise share the same values and beliefs. Metaphorically, again, the climate and soil may become perfect, but unless everyone is aware as to what it is they should be growing, and how to grow it (to suit the customer’s needs), the benefits of these activities are not ready to be reaped. To conclude, there has to be a solid foundation upon which to build, and everyone needs to