Why corporations love delegation and are scared of Empowerment

Not only does empowerment of employees take the load of the task away from managers, it also takes the load of the decision away, making the role of the manager much easier. The time the manager does not have to be in the operation, she can work on the operation – improving it.

Having more decision power closer to the customers and the employees create a more agile organisation that can respond to rapid or local changes without HQ being awake.

Decision power and responsibility is a powerful motivator that significantly increases Employee Engagement and through that increases customer engagement and financial results.

Most employees also tend to grow capabilities faster when trusted with decisions rather than being locked in a training room for mandatory compliance training. So how come many companies don’t really deploy empowerment?

So why don’t organisations embrace Empowerment?

Many organisations now see themselves as values based. This should in principle means less rules and higher ability for the individual contributor to have responsibility and decision power over what they do. Often in the same companies there are more rules than ever, often camouflaged as a need to meet governance, compliance or to lower corporate risk. Many of these rules are created to protect the organisation against potential actions of the individual employee - a strange concept indeed. 

Decisions are concentrated around a few select senior managers and delegation trickles down the organisation in a way that often is counterproductive to what individuals and departments are trying to achieve.

In these organisations it looks like control and hierarchy is more important than making the company great and able to create value. There are powerful forces that make it so, as senior management is always benefitting from status quo.

Their operating logic dictates that highly paid individuals knows best and needs to decide. While this might be true it completely disarms the organisation and lowers the engagement of the entire organisation. This can become a threat for the survival of the organisation. People without engagement stay and get their pay check but they are not motivated and do not contribute.

The direct manager

When divine decision does not create the intended greatness the spotlight is on the middle manager responsible for the implementation close to the employees. Creating an environment that punishes only increases the middle managers need for control and somebody to direct the blame to.

At the same time, it has become so popular to coach that managers call everything they do and have always done for coaching. Reality is that most managers are still coaching for compliance: Trying to manipulate the employee into what the corporation thinks is the right behaviour.

Delegation is a great tool if it is more important to stay in power than to create a great company and all stakeholders should analyse if their company has a delegating or an empowering culture. This is likely to determine their fate.

Seek companies with an Empowered Culture