[Part 5 of 5 tips for empowering your organization to grow]
This week, we've reviewed the keys to empowering teams and interlocking them to support a common goal—but even with all of its parts in place and perfectly greased, no machine will run without power.
Synergy flows from the top of an organization, down to the very bottom. Without commitment to empower from the top down, an organization cannot and will not grow. It will stagnate until the next innovative competitor overtakes the market.
The most important key to enabling any team or organization is focus.
Individuals and individual teams must be empowered to focus solely on the prioritized tasks that support their immediate goal—and leaders must be empowered to focus solely on the big picture.
Authors Bryan Smith and Joel Yanowitz said...
"Empowerment is one of the buzzwords of the ’90s. Yet most organizational empowerment efforts fall short of making any substantive impact. Why? We believe alignment is the key. Empowerment without alignment is dysfunctional. It doesn’t help. In fact, it often exacerbates existing conflicts and counterproductive behaviors. Well-intentioned, committed people make escalating errors and become progressively more frustrated and disenfranchised. And then the leadership responds by stepping in and taking back the authority only recently delegated. If the only leverage you have is the granting or withholding of authority, it is nearly impossible to break out of that pendulum swing."
The primary job of leaders is to remove obstacles and to protect and fortify:
- Task and goal prioritization
- Organizational alignment with those goals
- Constant process improvement
- Truth, trust, and transparency
Nothing should deter a leader from this focus. A leader who is not allowed to delegate is not allowed to lead, and an organization without leaders can never grow.
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