Power and Empowerment

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Power and Empowerment
Delegation and Empowerment
MTL Course Topics
DELEGATION AND
EMPOWERMENT

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MTL Course Topics
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MTL Course Topics
ARE YOU READY?
OK, LET’S START!

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MTL Course Topics
INTRODUCTION
Question: If delegation and empowerment are such great
ideas, what stops us from implementing them at once?
Answer: Our perception of the finite nature of power and
our fear that if we "give" power to others we will have less
and they will have more.
Solution: Change the way we see power.

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MTL Course Topics
FOUR POWER PEAKS
According to Jeffrey Pfeffer of the Stanford Business School,
power is the only way things get done in an organisation.
But power is not always in obvious places.
In the Handy-Harrison model of organisational culture,
power can be seen to rest in any, or all, of four locations...
1. with owners who have ultimate power in deciding the
future of the organisation but little day-to-day
influencing power
2. with managers who have the power to shape the style
and culture of the organisation
3. with employees who have the power to do a good job
or bad job
4. with anyone, anywhere and everywhere.
These four locations have been described as four mountain
peaks, named after four Greek deities: Zeus, Apollo, Athena
and Dionysus.

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MTL Course Topics
WHAT POWER DO YOU HAVE?
The Handy-Harrison model of organisational culture
suggests that there are four types of power in any business.
These relate to four gods of Ancient Greece.
1. Mt Zeus: power is almighty and resides with owners who
can bring the enterprise to an end if they wish.
2. Mt Apollo: power resides with managers according to
status: the higher you are, the more power you have.
3. Mt Athena: power resides with those who do the job.
More people have power because they are informed,
responsible and have authority.
4. Mt Dionysus: power is spread around the organisation as
needed. It is diffuse, constantly changing, and based on
individuals taking power to themselves.

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MTL Course Topics
POWER AT THE TOP
Top-down power is represented by the gods, Zeus and
Apollo. Zeus was the mightiest of the Greek gods who ruled
by whim and impulse. Apollo was the god of reason and
logic. The power of Zeus and Apollo lies in their strength and
strategic might.
In organisations, strong power resides with owners and
managers who can make "big" decisions about the
organisation. They have it in them to protect others or to
inflict harm, to reward or to punish. They represent
traditional power, the power to impress, the power we
respect and fear.
The power to impress is more potential power than real
power. Although owners and managers have the power to
determine the fate of the enterprise, this power is rarely
realised.

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MTL Course Topics
POWER AT THE BOTTOM
Bottom-up power is represented by Athena and Dionysus.
Athena was the Greek goddess of wisdom and Dionysus the
god of the self-oriented individual. Their power lies in their
knowledge, their tactical position and their potential to do
good.
In organisations, knowledge power exists at all levels, with
those in key positions and those at the very bottom of the
rung. These are the people whom customers see. They
determine the moments of truth between organisation and
customers and they have the power to make those everyday
points of contact successes or failures.
The man or woman on the shop-floor has always had
power: the power to "screw up". Who is more powerful: the
chief executive meeting business colleagues or the
receptionist who can "forget" to put through an important
call from the business's main customer?

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MTL Course Topics
EVERYONE HAS POWER
Power comes in two guises:
1. The power to impress. The power to impress is the
traditional form of power. It consists of identifying the
forces that will influence others to act. The five main types
of "impression power" are: physical power such as physical
presence and strength; resource power, consisting of the
right to give or take away resources; position power,
connected to one's place in the organisational pecking
order; expert power based on what you know; and
connections power based on who you know.
2. The power to get things done. The power to get things
done is not dependent on position, status or knowledge, but
rather personal skills such as goal-setting, determination,
persistence, interpersonal relating, listening, decision-
taking, all of which are enhanced by empowering people.

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THE LOOK OF POWER
The power to impress others is still important in the internal
politics of organisations. It can be used by people who do
not have traditional power, such as rank and status, in order
to legitimately influence others.
Impression power may be needed in the following
situations: to negotiate for limited resources; to sell an idea;
to argue a point of view; to motivate others to act; to get
others to believe in you; to control, stop and put others
down; to defend oneself against opponents.
There are endless ways to build up impression power. Some
of the more familiar are: building allies and empires;
constraining resources that others need; flaunting expertise;
playing win-lose games with others; hitching yourself to a
rising star; winning over the boss or the boss's boss;
informing on others; rebelling and so on.

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THE FIVE P'S OF POWER
The five P's of Power enable people throughout an
organisation to use the power they have for positive
purposes.
They are...
1. The Permission To Act. People need to know it's OK to
take action which they think is appropriate.
2. Protection From Recriminations. In the event of mistakes
and difficulties, people need to know that they will not be
blamed or scapegoated.
3. The Potency Of Action. People need to know that they
have powers to take decisions, issue instructions, obtain
resources or do whatever is necessary to reach their goals.
4. Practice. Empowered behaviour should not be an
occasional or once-in-a-while practice but a continual and
ongoing part of the work.
5. Proof. The organisation needs to show that
empowerment brings results over other forms of working.

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MTL Course Topics
PUSHING OUT BOUNDARIES
Xerox, the photocopier and digital printer organisation,
undertook a review in the mid-1990's which resulted in the
formation of self-managing teams.
The directors believe that their job is to set the targets and
create the vision - they aim, for example, to reach a £6
billion turnover figure - while the job of the teams is to
translate these targets into practical plans.
Human resources director Ralph Orrico says: "Once you've
set the vision, the concrete objectives, the priorities and so
on, you can't shackle the organisation with rigid processes
that prevent people from pushing out the boundaries as far
as possible. We ask two questions about every workgroup.
First, can they do it? Which is a matter of skills and
experience. Secondly, do we let them? Which is about
culture and behaviour."

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MTL Course Topics
TEN WAYS TO BLOCK CHANGE
Rosabeth Moss Kanter in her book "The Change Masters"
suggests that change is blocked when the 5 P's of Power -
permission, protection, potency, practice and proof - are
withheld from people.
These are the ways she believes that change is blocked by
those in senior positions:
1. regard ideas from below with suspicion
2. insist that people need your approval to do anything
3. get everyone to challenge and criticise everyone else
4. withhold praise
5. treat problems as a sign of failure
6. control everything. Count everything a lot.
7. make changes in secret and then spring them on people.
8. make sure any request for information is justified
9. pass down responsibility for cutting back, laying off and
firing people and call it delegation
10. remember that you, the higher-ups, already know
everything important there is to know about the business.

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THE PROS AND CONS OF CHANGE
The political thinker, Niccolo Machiavelli, said in the 15th
century: "There is nothing more difficult to plan and more
dangerous to manage than the creation of a new order of
things." Yet, for most organisations, empowerment - the
release of power down the line - is nothing short of a
fundamental change in the way the business runs.
Some of the ways an empowerment programme can work
include: learning how to manage change; going at a speed
that takes people with you; relentless communicating;
working at building trust; creating small pockets of change;
and identifying key change agents to be role models.
To quote Machiavelli again: "The initiator of change has the
enmity of all those who would profit by the preservation of
the old order and merely lukewarm defendants in those
who might gain from the new."

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POCKETS OF GOOD PRACTICE
The "pockets of good practice" approach to change works
from the bottom up instead of the top down. Instead of
management-led change from above, this practice allows
small teams to change their methods of working and prove
they work before introducing them to the rest of the
organisation.
Pockets of good practice succeed when management create
a climate where permission is given to try new ideas. They
work best where teams have their own leadership and
political skills and value the intrinsic rewards of what they
are doing. In short, they need their own vision of what is
possible.
Pockets of good practice work because people do have
power. They can succeed if they manage the delicate
balance between being organisationally acceptable and
organisationally subversive at the same time.

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MTL Course Topics
CREATE POCKETS OF CHANGE
One of the UK's leading timber and builders' merchants,
Jewson, has shown that the idea of creating pockets of good
practice can influence others in the organisation to change
outdated management practices. Seen by some as
"subversives", such a group can still work within the
framework of the organisation's aims.
An initiative called BM2000 brings together a group of 30
branch managers for 2 days every month. These meetings
are designed to stimulate new thinking and new targets
within a framework of improving customer service. The
team are allowed to innovate and share in the rewards.
Stimulated by talks from external speakers, the group came
up with ideas such as flexible working, annualised hours,
better product training and improved transport efficiency.
As a result, others now want to join the group and emulate
their success.

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CAPTURE THE KEY PEOPLE
Malcolm Gladwell, author of “The Tipping Point”, says that
change is effected best not by trying to win over the mass of
people, but by capturing the key personalities who can
influence others. He calls this “the law of the few”.
There are 3 types of people you need to target when
undertaking a major change:
1. those with plugged-in social networks
2. those with infectious or persuasive personalities
3. those with a reputation for expertise.
When you recruit these people to the cause of change, you
stand a greater chance of success.

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MTL Course Topics
EIGHT KINDS OF POWER SKILLS
In "The Change Masters", Rosabeth Moss Kanter argues that
change agents need power skills to help them overcome
resistance by others towards new ideas.
These power skills include a range of tactics such as...
1. wearing the opposition down through persistence
2. inviting them in to join the party
3. waiting them out until they go away
4. using the support of higher authority
5. altering any ideas the opposition don't like
6. sending them friendly emissaries
7. warning them you've got powerful allies
8. getting your people in at key meetings.
Personal power skills such as influencing have a much
greater chance of success than organisational power
symbols which people tend to resist more.

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HANDING OVER POWER
In organisations which have traditionally kept power
amongst owners and managers, an empowerment
programme will appear to involve a transfer, or giving away,
of power from one group of people to another.
Such a change is likely to be difficult and painful and will
require skilful change management. In fact, power is not a
finite resource, but an investment. It is like money. The
more you put in and wisely spread around, the more it will
grow.
Many well-established organisations have already made
major changes towards empowering their staff from the
very start of their employment. In parts of the new British
Gas organisation, for example, apprentices are no longer
tested on just verbal, numerical and mechanical skills, but
also on their initiative, problem-solving ability and customer
orientation.

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CHANGE PROGRAMMES
There are three keys to successful change programmes:
1. Win Hearts and Minds. It is not just the reasons why
empowerment works that have to be sold; you must also
get people to believe in the changes with their hearts.
2. Action. Action across a number of fronts is needed to
bring about change. At a simple level it may mean symbolic
changes, such as single status car parks and uniforms; at a
more detailed level, it might mean action to provide new
skills. Almost certainly it will need training in how to do
things that people have not been allowed to do before.
3. Think Long-term. Rarely does empowerment in
established organisations work overnight. It requires long-
term planning; long-term investment and an eye on the
ultimate goal.

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MTL Course Topics
HOW CULTURE AFFECTS CHANGE
A key factor in whether empowerment is likely to succeed in
an organisation is the prevailing climate of the outside
environment. Where risk-taking, open communication and
learning are encouraged, empowerment is likely to be more
welcomed than where these factors are missing.
A survey of five countries by the European Enterprise
Culture found the following:
1. Germany encourages measured risk-taking and provides
funds for change.
2. France tolerates mistakes, invests in training but has
little formal consultation procedures.
3. Spain is poor at delegating but rewards initiative.
4. The UK encourages new ideas but is indifferent towards
training; has limited delegation and does little
consulting.
5. Italy is poor at motivation, is unlikely to train and is
intolerant of mistakes.

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RELEASE PEOPLE POWER
Empowerment programmes do not always require major
structural changes but they may require major attitudinal
changes in the way we see people and their jobs.
To release the power that is already with the people doing
the job, we can...
1. give ownership of the job to the people doing it
2. make them responsible for the outcomes
3. invite them to do more than what is written in a job
description
4. provide them with the skills and knowledge that will
delight the customer
5. encourage them to want to improve their own
performance.
W. Edwards Deming, the guru of total quality management,
said: "Oh, those words! Empowerment? Nonsense! They
need to know what their jobs are."

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“OWN, DECIDE, DO” AT BT
In 1993, shortly after privatisation, a new division of BT was
formed called the Consumer Division, covering all front-line
BT staff.
Up until then, the company had viewed itself as a process-
orientated organisation, with manuals covering almost
every aspect of working life, including the precise phrases
that operators had to use. In the wake of change, such a
bureaucratic approach no longer became sustainable.
The division decided to develop four attitudes in its staff:
1. to know instinctively how to help BT succeed
2. to take personal accountability for customer needs
3. to take decisive action on behalf of the customer
4. to take considered risks to delight the customer.
The programme became known as "Own, Decide, Do" and
became the rock on which BT's success has been built.

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CHANGING DAILY HABITS
It is not necessary to introduce a major cultural change
programme in an organisation in order to empower people.
It can be achieved by introducing numerous daily acts of
one-to-one empowerment.
These can include the following...
1. get to know your people better
2. take an interest in what they do
3. find out what ideas they have to improve the way they
work. Never belittle any suggestion.
4. praise people and eliminate blame and excuses
5. ask people what you can do to help them
6. get them to share your vision of where you want to go
7. remind them of the vision at every opportunity
8. be enthusiastic, positive and upbeat in your
expectations of what people can achieve
9. be open to being surprised and delighted at what
people can do.

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THE “HAVE NOTS”
Empowerment works best when people see power as an
unlimited resource rather than something that is finite and
can only be controlled if kept in the hands of the few.
Managers who keep their own power while releasing it in
others can be truly considered, in Eric Hoffer's words, as
"the haves", while those who cling to power and jealously
guard it from others as "the have not’s".
"The real "haves" are those who can acquire freedom, self-
confidence and riches without depriving others of them.
They acquire all of these by developing and applying their
potentialities. On the other hand, the real "have nots" are
those who cannot have aught except by depriving others of
it. They can feel free only by diminishing the freedom of
others, self-confident by spreading fear and dependence
among others and rich by making others poor." (Eric Hoffer,
1902 - 83)

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THAT’S
IT!
WELL DONE!

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THANK YOU
This has been a Slide Topic from Manage Train Learn

Power and Empowerment

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