Habit #4 has 4 Parts: Knowledge, Information, Power, and Control; "the way things are done around here."
Habit #4 is all about organizational cultures – it is all about “how things are done around here.” Our organization was built on a leadership philosophy that many refer to as a “learning organization.”
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| This is our organizational chart. The foundation - the BOSS - are the values, mission, and vision. The people normally depicted at the top of the human pyramid are considered support staff for the "power staff" - those who interact with the children, families, and schools. A learning organization is a non-hierarchical organization where all stakeholders are involved in deciding how the organization will conduct itself. |
Knowledge, information, power, and control are not held by lone managers; instead leaders develop people.
Empowerment is defined as giving employees the knowledge and information they need to assume more autonomy and responsibility within an organization. It is an enabling process that increases the intrinsic task motivation for employees and increases their self-efficacy—the individual’s belief that he or she is capable. The outcomes of empowerment are employees who are more effective, innovative, and capable of exerting influence, and who have higher levels of job satisfaction and lower levels of stress.
Effective leaders establish a helpful, service-oriented culture. Give employees the knowledge and information they need, then empower them to make independent decisions and solve problems, and you will create happier leaders, happier customers, and a happier YOU.
Sharing Information
The ultimate leader is one who is willing to develop people to the point that they eventually surpass him or her in knowledge and ability.—Fred A. Manske, Jr.
Sharing of information is an essential component of high-performance organizations. Ken Blanchard, world-recognized guru of leadership and customer service says, “The first key of empowerment is to share information with everyone!” It lets people understand the current situation in clear terms. It begins to build trust throughout the organization. It breaks down traditional hierarchical thinking. It helps people be more responsible, and it encourages people to act like owners of the organization.
Sharing information about financial performance, administrative strategies, and long-term planning sends a message that the organization’s people are trusted. Chelsea teaches a college course on child care management.
This is her story.
When it is time to teach about budget development, I ask my students to bring in a copy of the budget from their own organization. I was at first surprised and continue to be disheartened at how many students are not allowed to see the budget of the organization they work for. They tell me that their directors tell them that the information is confidential and can only be seen by the owner and center director. If you want to create a high-involvement organization, you can’t have secrets.
Employees of empowering organizations know not only what is happening in the organization but why and how it could affect their jobs and careers. If you want leaders at all levels to show good fiscal management skills, to conserve supplies, to feel ownership and responsibility for the financial strength of your organization, they NEED to share in the information. “Open-book” management creates ownership and shared responsibility. People without information cannot act responsibly. People with information are compelled to act responsibly. Sharing information motivates employees by providing relevancy. Employees must have all of the knowledge and information they need to effectively exercise the power and control they must have to be self-directed. Give your organization’s budget information or your program budget to your staff. Teach them how to read and analyze it. Spend time discussing it and answering questions.
Sharing Knowledge
Training is often seen as a frill in many organizations—something to be cut if profits diminish. This is an example of the short-term thinking that enslaves managers and inhibits the development of a high-involvement organization. Knowledge and skills are crucial to organizations, and too few organizations designate their resources in ways that honor this insight. Training involves establishing clear boundaries and high expectations that build upon information sharing. Ken Blanchard’s second key to empowerment is to “Create autonomy through boundaries.” Boundaries establish a purpose; they define the “business of the business.” They establish values and operational guidelines. They establish long-term strategic thinking. They help translate the goals for the organization and roles for the stakeholders. The vision of an organization truly becomes alive when everyone sees where his or her contribution can make a difference. Training is a vehicle to these ends.
When typical organizations do spend money and time on training, most training covers policies and procedures. It often includes how to handle situations according to “upper management.” Instead of teaching leaders only “how” to do something, teach them “why.” Teach leaders how to problem solve. How to identify a problem and how to think about all the options they have available to them. When you spend training time and energy on explaining the standard or the “boundary” and how to solve problems you empower your leaders. Let the team decide how to best meet the expectation with their available resources. Every team and every site has different situations. The traditional mold won’t work for everyone.
Training leads to empowerment by teaching others things they can do to become less dependent on you. Training is an essential component of high-involvement organizations because this paradigm relies on “frontline” employee skill and initiative to identify, solve problems, initiate solutions, serve the needs of families, and take responsibility for safety and quality.
You will know when you are giving your leaders enough information because they will need you less. It may begin to feel like you are no longer a good leader. Before founding our organization, Chelsea was the director of a large corporate child care center in New Mexico.
This is her story.
The company had over a hundred centers across the nation, and we often got together for retreats and training events. At every break at one of my first retreats all the directors in my division would rush into the hall to return pages or phone messages with their staff back at their centers. I never got one message. I began to feel useless and not needed. I made this comment to my regional manager and she told me something very memorable. She said, “Chelsea, it is a sign of a good leader when your staff do not need you. You have trained them well.”
Sharing Power and Control
He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.—Aristotle
Ken Blanchard’s third key to empowerment is “To replace hierarchy with self-directed work teams!” Less bureaucratic, elitist, hierarchical, and authoritarian organizations can create self-managed teams that are more communicative, participatory, and empowered. Self-managed teams permit removal of layers of hierarchy and absorption of administrative tasks. Empowered TEAMS can do more than empowered INDIVIDUALS. Teams with information and training can replace hierarchy. When power and control are decentralized all of the people in the organization feel accountable and responsible for the success of the organization and the accomplishment of the mission.
Child care and youth development organizations are a uniquely good fit for self-managed teams because individual sites provide a cellular structure for the identification of these teams. Each site can become a self-managed team, trained and empowered to facilitate the positive development of children and meet the needs of families.
In a classic experiment, management gave factory employees a lever that controlled how fast they could operate the assembly line. They were at first afraid that employees would take advantage and slow down production. They were later surprised that employees actually worked faster when they felt in control of their work. Employees who participate in decision making, collecting information, generating alternatives, and implementing decisions have an increased sense of control and commitment. In our organization, all leaders participate in developing policy, designing their own evaluation instruments, and making all hiring decisions. Caregivers participate in the hiring decisions of their potential site directors and thereby become more committed to the supervisor who is eventually hired. Self-directed teams lead to increased job satisfaction; an attitude change from “have to” to “want to;” greater employee commitment; better communication between employees and management; a more efficient decision-making process; improved quality of services; reduced operating expenses; and a more profitable and successful organization.
Making Mistakes
Failure is the foundation of success, and the means by which it is achieved. —Lao Tsu
Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience? —Thomas J. Watson
In learning organizations mistakes are accepted and expected. Leaders of organizations must continuously learn and constantly reinvent themselves. Leaders learn from their mistakes and experiences. Leaders take risks, make mistakes, and gain satisfaction from the lessons they learn. They see learning not as a confession of ignorance, but as a way of being. Lead learners must view mistakes as steppingstones to continuous learning, and essential to further business growth.
If mistakes are not being made, new possibilities are being ignored. The world’s greatest advances and discoveries were the result of mistakes. Members of Learning Organizations learn from their mistakes, learn to take responsibility for them, and learn not to repeat them. Thomas Edison once said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.”
An effective leader must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them. Anyone who refuses to profit by his mistakes is a fool. Every mistake is an opportunity to increase competency.
Chelsea has a story about the value hidden within mistakes. Here is her story. A few years back, a site director of ours made one of the worst mistakes someone can make in our field: she left a five-year-old at a field trip site, violating one of our very few strict procedures.
She called me as the bus was about to arrive at her site to inform me that she had just realized this child was missing. I raced to pick the child up and met my site director and the child’s angry parents in the parking lot of our school. By the time the parents left, the site director was in tears. I looked at her and just said, “Meet me at 9:30 in my office tomorrow morning.”
I was not sure what I was going to do. The obvious solution was to fire her. Most supervisors would not have questioned this. At 9:30 the next day, she was in my office with a stack of papers. She had stayed up most of the night writing down how she had left the child back. She also had spent most of the night writing down all the ways she would never let that happen again if allowed to keep her job. We talked extensively about what happened and how she planned to prevent this from happening in the future. She had analyzed the situation well. I let her stay and here’s why.
Because of that mistake, I could practically guarantee that no child from that site would ever get left behind on a field trip as long as that site director was in charge. Not only could I make that guarantee, but that site director stood up at every new-hire orientation for the next three years and told that story (usually in tears) when we got to the field trip procedures. By accepting that mistake and learning from it, we gained more than we could have by firing her and hiring a brand new site director who could just as easily make the same mistake.
People say, “Success always takes place in private, and failure in the full view of others.” I say, “If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried!” My daughter says, “If at first you don’t succeed, get new batteries.”
Discussion Questions
1. Do you have horror stories about terrible service you have received? Do you have examples of great service? Think about the people responsible for the service you received. Were they empowered or not?
2. Think about your current job. What power does your boss withhold from you? What would you like more power and control over?
3. What power do you withhold from your leaders? What can you delegate to your leaders to help them grown and learn and develop?
4. Does your boss share all the information with you that you need to do your job well? Do you withhold information from your leaders? Do they have the information they need about the budget or about how the organization operates that would help them to feel more ownership?
5. Can you identify status differences in your organization? Do people in power get special perks that the more “lowly” people are denied? Are these differences necessary?
Great information! Will definitely use this!
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