2016-02-25 11:03:41
Michael Schrage
February 22, 2016
An executive friend in an organization and industry riven by digital disruption
and declining margins confided over lunch how dramatically her new CEO had
impressed everyone at a recent executive offsite. She listened carefully to
people s complaints about all the processes and obstructions they felt got in
the way of their doing their jobs, said my friend, and instead of pushing
back or challenging them, she agreed and said she d do everything she could to
get those obstacles removed .People were amazed and energized.
Responsive CEOs are wonderful. But, knowing the industry well, her declared
commitment suggested more than an understandable desire to eradicate unhappy
bureaucratic burdens. She likely wanted to see how well her top people
understood their own effectiveness. The unspoken deal: eliminating
organizational impediments would radically improve their business results.
This wasn t primarily about empowerment; the CEO was effectively removing
executive excuses for underperformance and inefficiency. Essentially, I
observed, this was an investment in making people more accountable. My friend,
who is responsible for a large part of the business, didn t disagree. She knew
she was on the hook.
While this approach is hardly manipulative or Machiavellian, it seems fair to
say organizations frequently misunderstand and misapply employee engagement and
empowerment. Engagement and empowerment represent admirable and desirable
values but they are fundamentally means, not ends. The business purpose of
greater employee engagement and empowerment is not happier employees but people
who are more productive, innovative, and accountable for the choices they make.
Empowerment is an investment in accountability. Successful organizations expect
healthy returns on their investments.
At one global B2B sales organization, for example, sales people perennially
complained about the burden of filing detailed reports on sales calls to
accounts and prospects alike. Even though the information and intelligence
these reports provided were useful to both sales teams and the enterprise
alike, the clear sales majority argued that the time and effort the reports
took cut into the time and effort they spent on selling. We could sell more if
you made us report less, said the sales force. Free us up to sell. Make
reporting less burdensome. Empower us.
So, both as test and demonstration that it took its sales team seriously, the
company changed reporting requirements for a few geographies and product lines.
The result? Sales increased for a handful of high performers; held steady for
the overwhelming majority; and measurably dropped for about 20% of the
participants.
Empowerment, in other words, boosted sales for only a sliver of the force; it
had no positive productivity benefit for the rest. Indeed, reviews of the
initiative suggested that marketing and customer service were hurt by the lack
of detailed sales reports for those accounts. Ironically and in fact, average
salespeople proved more dependent on past reports for their effectiveness than
they had acknowledged.
The exercise ultimately had a massive impact on the sales organization. While
the firm eventually streamlined sales reporting requirements, the experience
revealed the sales force had hired too many underperformers; too many
salespeople couldn t accurately assess prospect potential and couldn t figure
out where they were in the sales cycle without more detailed support. The
bottom line? Freeing up top salespeople was a terrific investment; empowering
average and/or typical salespeople delivered poor ROI.
Whether in sales, customer service, or software, empowered employees who
consistently underperform are probably in the wrong job. Indeed, empowerment
may be the surest way of determining whether rigorous compliance or greater
initiative delivers the greatest value-added component of a job. Empowerment is
the antithesis of compliance; its purpose is increasing choices rather than
limiting them.
But where compliance holds employees accountable for following the rules,
empowerment makes them accountable for their choices. The more empowered
employees are, the more accountable they become. In other words, be careful of
what you wish for because you are sure to get it.
Michael Schrage, a research fellow at MIT Sloan School s Center for Digital
Business, is the author of the books Serious Play (HBR Press), Who Do You Want
Your Customers to Become? (HBR Press) and The Innovator s Hypothesis (MIT
Press).