Workplace efforts must fit situation

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The e-mail and letters have been pouring in about last week's column. To refresh your memory, I asked for readers' reactions to a company president's letter. He said that he was an advocate of employee involvement but that empowerment, self-directed teams, and sharing company financials can be overdone. He wondered how much was too much and suggested some simple, common sense ways to share the information employees need. He also suggested that self-directed teams aren't always the best solution. And he was an advocate of simple terms such as "teaching" rather than words such as "coaching."

Here's a sample of what you said:

Dear Joan:
"I am a human resources professional who has worked in both large and small firms. In my experience, many managers are too quick to adopt the latest management fad or attempt to copy approaches which have worked elsewhere. Organizations, which truly have success with employee involvement, have worked hard over a long period to find a strategy that is right for them. There is no single solution. It's important to look at other's success but the focus should be on what your business is attempting to achieve through employee involvement. You may discover that teaming, coaching, empowerment, and the like are not the best or only solution."

Dear Joan (From a director of engineering at a 60-employee company:

"Simply put, empowerment without training is dangerous. Trained empowerment without specific goals is, at best, futile. At worst, fatal. Coaching is an essential element in achieving maximum results. I like the word coaching more than teaching; coaching implies that you stand off to the side of the playing field with responsibility for results, but not as a direct participant.

Set goals, provide information as needed (not so much that it becomes confusing or distracting), coach, and reward results. Keep it simple. Folk singer Woody Guthrie wrote, `Any fool can make something complicated- it takes a genius to make it simple.' "

Dear Joan: (From a consulting engineer:

"A seemingly favorite change in the '90's is to supposedly empower the workforce, which, can create quite a waste of time, as the workforce is spending its time just to make decisions. (I have yet to see how individual members of self-directed work teams are compensated on the merit system; get on a losing team and you will not be looked upon with much favor!) It would seem that for major corporations, Boards of Directors should be asking questions when they notice radical changes in management styles which do not get down to the bottom line in rather short order."

Dear Joan: (From a Human Resources professionalJ

"It has been my belief and practice for the last 20 years that all employees from the janitor to the CEO can positively impact on quality, quantity, timeliness, costs, safely and interpersonal relationships. Given this premise, we have fed back to the employees macro statistical results in all areas on a monthly or quarterly basis. Since these numbers reflect the results of the entire operation, everyone pulls together better to improve the overall operation...Employees can understand and affect absenteeism, injuries, waste of materials, and utilities, scrap product, production rates, machine downtime, and employee complaints. By tracking and communicating results in these areas back to employees, employee morale and productivity has improved at least $500,000 per year."

Dear Joan: (From a former school principal)

"My m.o. was to collaborate with the various stakeholders in the operations in the school. Staff was trained to plan and run effective planning meetings. A board was created to assist in moving the school into the 21st century...In preparing to leave the post, I honestly believed that things were in terrific shape...I thought the empowered ones would continue to carry the ball...

Enter a new "leader." Every initiative came to a dead halt. No one stepped forward to keep the flow going. They relegated total power to the new principal. People are complaining about the lack of action, but nothing is being done.

The lesson I learned is that EMPOWERMENT ONLY GOES SO FAR. These people were hard working, committed members of the school community. But the leader is key. The leader provides the grease, feeds the group, buoys them up, eats and breathes the vision and mission. Trends like sight-based management and collaborative decision making sound good, but I was naive to think that this was the driving force of the institution's growth and development. Employee/constituent involvement IS important, but...the leader makes it happen!"

My thanks to all of you for your insightful opinions.

Would you like to bridge the commitment gap with your employees?   We provide management consulting, executive coaching and customized, skills-based training for managers and supervisors, that changes behavior, creates a healthy culture and builds a customer-focused team.  Call us today at (800) 348-1944.