Prepare a summary that compares
and contrasts the concepts discussed to those discussed in the text.
Precipitous empowerment mandates
In his article,
Forrester said that providing too much power by entrusting your employees in a
short period of time will not work and may backfire. Time is need by the
employees to adjust to their new responsibilities and some times additional
training is required. This is similar to what was mentioned in the text.
Besides simply empowering individuals, additional resources and training needs
to be provided as well. This allows employees to access more information and
hence, do their job properly.
Overreliance on a narrow psychological concept
Forrester next
talks about the innate nature of humans to feel self-competent and
self-efficacy. Executives then convince employees that they have such power but
in reality, they do not. This may lead to the employee feeling deluded and in a
way, cheated. As stated in the text, this actually has a negative effect. The
employee who was supposed to have power but does not have will feel even more
powerless than before and helpless.
Distortions of accountability
In the article,
Forrester mentioned that there are occasions where employees are given the
power and authority to make decisions but do not make them accountable for
their decisions. This works both ways. If a good decision was made, the
employee does not get credit. If a bad decision was made, they do not suffer
the consequences either. This leads to a reversal of power, especially in a bad
scenario. This has also been mentioned in the text. For every task that the
employee is delegated, he or she needs to be identified with it and must take
full responsibility for their actions.
One-size-fits-all empowerment
Forrester states
that empowering employees have benefits and are not destructive to the
organization. However, it is important to identify the employees who are ready
to take up additional responsibility through such empowerment. This concept is
also covered in the text but under delegation. When delegating work to an
employee, it is necessary to consider the abilities and commitment of the
employee. By delegating authority properly, the risk of having to pull back
this authority when a mistake is made will be lesser.
Focus on results
In the text, it
was mentioned that for an individual to feel empowered, he needs to have a
clear vision and goal of what needs to be accomplished. This can only be
provided for by his or her supervisor or
the person empowering this employee. Goals need to be SMART – Specific,
Measurable, Aligned, Realistic and Time-bound. Similar, Forrester talks about
how businesses tend to be good at establishing goals but often these goals do
not have much significance. Examples are profits, market share and
productivity. However, such end result numbers do not mean anything to
employees and are not specific enough. A better way is to set goals and targets
for the employees in order to achieve the profits, productivity and market
share that the company wants. This can come in the form of number of sales made
or achieving a certain number of output per given time frame.
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