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The case for empowering workers

by Stephen Hawley Martin
for Virginia Business
April 2, 2007

There's been a lot of conversation lately about empowering workers, moving to management by teams and getting rid of the old management pyramid. But is this just a lot of politically correct poppycock, or does such an organization really run more efficiently?

For the past 10 years I've been directly involved with a phenomenon that's been spreading across the globe like kudzu: the transformation of old-style mass manufacturing operations into Lean Enterprises. And one thing is without question.

A Lean organization is much less hierarchical than a traditional company. In other words, it will be flatter, having fewer layers of management. Lean producers strive for an empowered workforce, organized into teams that are authorized to make decisions in a team's work area of responsibility.

Individual team members and their associates are empowered to make critical, on-the-spot decisions. For example, a worker might ask if the product's quality meet the customer's standards. If it does not, production will be stopped until the situation can be corrected.

Typical questions on the minds of shop floor team leaders might include: Is overtime required to meet customer shipment schedules? How can production efficiency be improved?

In many companies, teams conduct the interview process for prospective employees and make hiring decisions. They also conduct disciplinary peer reviews.

Empowerment is a critical aspect of a Lean Enterprise, and until empowerment is a reality and has been embraced, the experts I work with have found that little or no continuous improvement will take place. The reason is simple. If decisions are handed down from higher ups in the organization, ownership of any improvements made will be nonexistent among those who are in position to maintain and build on the improvements. For this reason, backsliding is likely to occur and successes are not likely to be maintained.

In almost every instance, an ongoing and structured process of training and support will be required before a company's culture will transform and empowerment become a reality. People have to become comfortable taking responsibility. Often they must migrate from what may have been a victim mentality to that of an accountable adult. It can be quite a distance from a position in which workers and bosses have an "us versus them" stance to one where every member of the group is able to see a problem, own it, create a solution and implement it.

A culture of accountability and empowerment is even more important in highly variable environments than in those that are repetitive in nature. In many cases, for example, it may not be possible for the engineering team to have developed all aspects of a design. As a result, much may be left to the discretion of workers.

If an empowered team environment does not exist, problems that arise on a daily basis will not be resolved on the spot as they otherwise would be. We all know the boss cannot be everywhere at once, but nonetheless, the company will come to a standstill until he gets there, and valuable time and money will be lost.

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Stephen Hawley Martin is a former principal of The Martin Agency in Richmond and the author of more than half a dozen books including his newest, Lean Enterprise Leader: How to Get Things Done Without Doing It All Yourself. He is editor and publisher of The Oaklea Press, a book publishing business dedicated primarily to helping business executives increase productivity.