Empowered or Compliant Workforces?
This article was written back in 2019 When I was still running Plasticity Labs and The HERO Generation.
Do your employees look to management for permission to act? Is there a script used to deliver service? Or a set of rules for the one or few ways people are allowed to solve problems? Does your workplace allow people freedom in how they best solve issues and then seek feedback that could be spread across the organization? Compliance is easy. Easier to train and manage and it is far less risky. it creates predictably adequate although rarely impressive results. That is why there is a renaissance moving towards more empowered workforces and I'm seeing these efforts and effects in my consultative work.
Would you define your team, location, business unit, or organization as compliance based or empowered? The healthy trend arising in organizations is towards empowering employees to solve many, or at least more problems locally without requiring management permission. However, I also see the friction that arises where people are accustomed to being compliant and then suddenly given freedom to use empathy and efficacy in solving problems and overcoming challenges. Let me be clear that moving towards empowered is a positive trend.
Empowering people to make better choices saves money, solves problems sooner and quickly, closer to where they arise and delivers improved customer satisfaction. In our desire for these outcomes, we need to remember that it will not happen quickly. Permission does not predict immediate action, and it will take repeated efforts to create new habits. After centuries of compliance based workplaces, all of the organizational, managerial, and behavioural habits are not ready to support empowerment. Moreover, trust is also commonly lacking.
Our HERO Generation program works to develop the traits that lead to courageous and empowered behaviours in children, but we immediately notice that our adult behaviours do not always support the development of the habits we are trying to elicit. "Be careful." How many times have you said those words? Saying this over and over does not support courageous or measured risk-taking behaviour in children. This example mirrors everything that gets in the way between wanting a new behaviour and encouraging it to develop in the workplace.
Do you work in a compliance-based organization? An empowered organization? A formerly compliance-based deeply desiring but struggling to become an empowered organization. A formerly compliance-based organization, saying it's changing to be more empowered but not willing to admit it would rather just stay compliance based. Change is hard even when it is right. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic and what examples you're seeing of it working well or struggling. You can imagine that the effects of this struggle show up in both our data and our consultative work at plasticity but I would really love to hear your anecdotes from the field.