You
Welcome to the Human Edge series.
I'm Margie Blanchard.
In a time where everyone is learning to do more with less, Ken and I are excited to bring
center stage top experts with proven methods of getting the most out of yourself and your
people.
In this episode of the Human Edge, from the pyramid to the circle, Empowerment in the
Workplace, Dr. Janice Jaffe describes how empowered work relationships differ from traditional
relationships with regard to power, responsibility, communications, expectations, and rewards.
Dr. Jaffe discusses the current environment of competition and scarce resources in business
that require managers to behave differently in order to be effective and help their organizations
thrive.
He addresses the issue of what empowerment looks like for the average manager.
This program takes a look at our highly competitive world and how organizations can adopt new
management structures to meet the challenges facing them.
These structures will increase productivity while reducing costs.
In this program, you'll learn the importance of using human capital to create productivity
gains, to empower your people to do more while reducing costs, to create a sense of accountability
for getting the job done, how to create alignment between you and your people, how to create
new forms of power to lead, and how to create an environment for entrepreneurship.
And now let's go to the studio.
Thank you.
Hello.
1978, delegations from each of the big three automakers took a trip to Japan to see for
themselves what it was that was creating the Japanese miracle.
And each of these three companies got a different perspective on it, and I think only one of
them has really been the perspective that is one that will take us into the next century
in the workplace.
Chrysler looked around, and what they saw in the Japanese miracle was cost cutting.
We can keep our costs down.
If we can lay off enough people, we'll have low enough costs to make a profit.
And that was a successful strategy, but what they did was mortgage their future by cutting
costs because they cut away the development of new ideas and new capacity for the future.
General Motors looked in a different place, and what they saw was automated factories,
technology.
Aha, if we get enough robots, we won't have to have employees if we automate our factories.
And they spent billions and billions of dollars to automate and to, on new technology, and
today they're stuck with one of the most unwieldy corporate structures which prevents them from
adapting and changing for the future.
Third automaker, Ford, saw something quite different.
They saw teams of people working together.
They saw people where everybody worked together.
Everybody had the power to make a choice.
The quality of what these teams did was checked by the people in the teams, not by some quality
control department, and the people in the teams figured out how to do the jobs best.
And they came back and they said, we're going to invest in our people.
We're going to create programs in participation, in quality, in continuous improvement, and
we see that our future is going to be, is going to come from the people in our company
making a difference and being more creative.
And while all the automakers are losing money these days, it seems that Ford is the company
that has made the most complete shift and is most prepared to meet the challenges of
the future.
What I'm going to talk about today is empowerment.
People in the organization, all through the organization, developing the capacity to make
a difference.
The human edge is about developing new skills, is about discovering that the things that
you've always done and the things that you've learned to do so well may not be the skills
and the techniques and the ways of seeing things that are going to take you into the
future.
The new workplace is going to demand people giving in a different way, not necessarily
working harder, but certainly working differently.
And I think this new thrust is not coming a moment too soon.
Every organization I know is going through the same process.
They're downsizing what we call, I call it going on a diet or corporate liposuction.
They're kind of pulling out 20% of the fat.
They say they're cutting out levels of management, like they're slicing them out and taking them
apart and then they're cutting costs and saying, well now we've just cut three people from
this work team.
And the three people that are left, well, you just have to be much more productive,
do the same work with a third of the money and half the people.
And organizations actually think that something has changed.
What's changed is the people are more terrified, the people are more confused, and people feel
overwhelmed by the problems.
The old ways won't work and the only way that this small team of three people will make
a difference is to begin to rethink how they work together.
They're going to have to have efficiencies in the way they work, not in working harder
or working faster.
What's happening in the organization is what I call corporate dinosaurs becoming extinct.
Large giant companies put on a lot of fat, have a lot of power and a lot of resources
and for the last 40 or 50 years these dinosaurs have ruled the earth.
They've been able to do anything they want, anywhere they want, and they've never been
challenged.
But now the climate is changing, the environment is changing, and these gigantic dinosaurs
are finding out that they can't adapt, that the ways that they've worked in the past are
not working for the future.
And they're being outmaneuvered by new nimble companies that are working in a different
way, that are growing up almost overnight and showing them that their way and their
style of operating is not the most effective.
Another thing that's happening through all this upheaval and uncertainty is that morale
is dropping.
The cover of Fortune magazine a couple of weeks ago said that morale in corporate America
has dropped to the lowest level since the Depression.
People are just angry, they're scared, they're confused about the workplace.
And the question is what can be done to rebuild their commitment and get them back on board?
Organization after organization is calling us and saying, well we want to get people
committed to the future, we want to get people on board.
And then they think that there's going to be some corporate program.
One corporation says, well what we're doing is hoopla, we're giving everybody t-shirts
and bringing them into a conference and getting a motivational speaker and they're all going
to be charged up and they will meet the commitment of the future.
What's wrong with that picture?
It's not going to happen.
The other thing about the Fortune magazine article that I found fascinating is that there's
only one group in the organization that doesn't know what's going on.
And those are the top levels of management.
The top levels of management do not know how upset and how confused and how angry the people
are in their organization.
They're in a state that we call denial, which means that they're not perceiving the real
problem and kind of like an ostrich, they're sticking their heads in the sand, they go
out to conferences, they travel around the world.
And what that does is it keeps them from the information that they would get if they just
change their clothes and just walk through the halls and the offices of their own organizations.
It's very interesting when you look at change.
According to a survey, 80% of CEOs feel that their organization has to change and has to
make major change.
Next question in the survey was, do you feel that you have to change?
Only 20% of the executives felt that they had to change.
And that's the problem.
In order to create the new workplace, it's not just organizations that have to change
and those people out there, it's we ourselves that have to change.
And as I talk about empowerment, I want you to see that it's kind of a push and pull is
that everybody has to shift their role and make a change.
If people below have more authority, more responsibility, more accountability, then
what that means is the people at the top, they don't give up accountability or responsibility
or power, but they will have to express their power in a different way.
And that is the struggle and the paradox of empowerment is how do different levels give
up and let go and as other people take on the new challenges.
So what I'll be doing in this talk is going through what I call some maps of the new workplace.
How is the workplace changing?
What is it that's different about the workplace of the future?
Why is it changing and why is it that these changes are the only way that the workplace
can survive?
First map I want to share with you is a little bit of a picture of what the new workplace
looks like.
Workplace of the future is learning oriented.
The one skill that everybody has to have in the workplace is what we call learning how
to learn.
Everybody's individual skills that they bring into the organization within five or six years,
they become obsolete.
If you've learned marketing or accounting or engineering in college or graduate school,
in order to be successful, you're going to have to learn other jobs in the organization.
Everybody in the organization is going to have to be learning more and more.
So we're beginning an era where we're questioning the pyramid.
So the first shift that's taking place in the pyramid came at an organization called
Nordstrom.
And Nordstrom decided that what they're going to do is turn the pyramid upside down and
people at the bottom, the customers, were going to be at the top.
And Nordstrom created an organization where the whole purpose of working there is to satisfy
the customer, to create relationship, to empower and leave the customer with a good experience
which would have as a byproduct buying clothing.
Now in their corporate headquarters, they have a tire.
And the reason they have a tire is because customer is always right.
And in one of their stories, a customer came in with a Sears tire and asked for a refund.
And they cheerfully gave this customer his money back.
It's an incredible experience when you haven't seen customer service and relationship to
go in.
The first time I went in to Nordstrom, it was like I shop very rarely and I don't consider
it one of my big life experiences.
And so I walked in and immediately three people came up to me and asked me what they could
do for me.
I kind of stiffened up and I said, gee, what am I wearing?
I must fit the profile of a shoplifter because I had never, ever had a salesperson pay the
slightest attention to me.
Looking at the new Circle workplace, what we have is a workplace where different kinds
of teams get together.
If you want to create a new product or you're working on a new idea, you want to work not
just with the other people in marketing but you want to work with some of the people in
manufacturing, some of the people that are involved in production, some of the people
that are designers and you want to create a team of people that works on new ideas.
If you look at an organization, who is it that's likely to have new product ideas and
new ideas for the organization?
Anybody.
Anybody may be in a position to see an opportunity.
So the new organizations have different kinds of circles of people working together, trying
to solve problems, coordinate rather than these kind of departments and divisions that
go back and forth.
How do you navigate?
How do you move around in a Circle workplace, in a workplace that's changing?
The old workplace, the big driver was tradition.
This is the way we do it in the Bell system.
This is the way the wise old elders tell us to do it.
The new workplace, we're working not by what we are but by what we're becoming in the future,
what our vision is.
And we're trying to create the new workplace.
And the process of visioning is one that's, it's kind of another new buzzword that's coming
into the workplace but it's one that creates a very, very powerful process for people in
terms of redesigning and rethinking the workplace.
Now a vision, a lot of people get confused about visions.
First way they get confused is they think that a vision is the same as a fantasy.
Now if you're going around having a fantasy, the purpose of a fantasy is just entertainment
value in the here and now.
I have fantasies, you all have fantasies, but that's not a vision because fantasy is not
something that you are prepared to act on.
The other things about a vision is that a vision is something that is inspiring.
Vision motivates you to want to make a difference, to want to act on it.
And good vision is something that's a stretch.
It's not a straight line projection into the future.
It's a vision of greatness, of excellence, of what it would be like if you or your organization
were high performers.
And what that does when a group begins to vision is it creates a sense of motivation
and excitement.
People began to see possibilities and feel that they're real.
People began to dissolve their resistance and think about how can we do this?
It's so exciting that I can almost get over the fear and the terror and the uncertainty
we have about what we're doing.
So a visioning process in a group is a very, very motivating, exciting process.
Another way that organizations, pyramid organizations, get confused about vision, and some of you
may be in organizations like this, is like an organization that we're working with now.
And top management has gotten together and created what they call the corporate vision.
It's a very powerful vision.
It's very creative.
But the rest of the corporation is kind of standing back and they're waiting.
And what's going to happen is they're going to be delivered the corporate vision and then
they're going to be asked to sign on and become committed to it.
Now what's wrong with this picture?
What's wrong with the picture is that it is not a two-way process.
Now of course we know the top management has to make the final decisions, has to be the
final arbiter of what we do, what you do, and how your resources get allocated.
But think of another possibility.
For the top management to get together once or twice and draw out some outlines or some
questions.
These are possibilities.
These are things we're excited about.
And then to let a whole bunch of smaller groups, cross-sectional groups get together and do
their own visioning.
Come up with ideas, come up with possibilities, come up with product ideas.
Look at what they see are problems and how they could be overcome.
And then to take all the information from these groups and feed it back to the top management
for the next version of their vision.
Difference between the two ways is the pyramid to the circle.
We talk about another map of the new organization which is how do you motivate people.
In a number of studies and what we're seeing is over the past 10 or 20 or 30 years, since
the 60s, there's been what we call a shift in what people want from work.
And while it's not that we've stopped wanting external rewards, power, status, we certainly
still want fair pay, but still people are going to work and wanting meaning.
They're wanting to make a difference.
They're wanting work that is about whole things, not little fragments where they don't see
what to do.
And people are coming with different values.
And the problem is that in a lot of workplaces, the motivational system is back in the 18th
century.
The carrot and stick, watch people.
If you don't look at them for two minutes, they'll stop working.
I mean, it's rather incredible what people think about motivation.
And yet, when you talk to people about what motivates you for high performance, what really
makes a difference for people, you find that three qualities of a workplace are paramount.
First quality is, and they're VIP, validation, information, and participation.
Validation means, very simple, anywhere else in the world but in the organization, you
treat people like people.
You respect them.
You understand that a person has a life outside the organization.
And validating workplaces, not just respecting people, but allowing flexibility for people's
personal needs.
In a lot of workplaces, we have discovered what we call the three o'clock productivity
drop.
And it's not about our metabolism goes down at three o'clock or anything.
What we find is, what happens at three o'clock is people begin to get concerned about their
kids coming home from school.
Now, in their infinite wisdom, a lot of workplaces say, no personal calls.
Don't leave your desk.
You have to just forget about your family.
And what happens is, with that work rule, you have somebody who is sitting at their
desk not making phone calls, getting angrier and angrier and worried and more and more
worried over the course of the last two hours and doing absolutely nothing.
Now, think about a workplace where they say, well, just do what you want with your kids
as long as you get your work done and you fulfill your commitment to the workplace.
Now, I've asked that in a lot of companies.
And the thing that they say is very interesting.
What they say is, well, if we let some people do this, then other people would take advantage
of it.
Now, think about that and ask yourself, what age employee does this person have in mind?
How old do you have to be to understand, hey, you're calling your kids.
And I'm sure if I get sick or something happens to me, the company will go out of its way
for me.
So people who are in companies where there's flexibility, where people are said, do the
job, we're not going to worry about all kinds of work rules, to inhibit you begin to feel
better and more committed than people who are tied down by a lot of rules.
Information, it's a second aspect of it.
Information means giving people not just information to do their job, but as much information as
possible.
One of the most sensitive areas in workplaces is sharing financial information.
And here's a story of a construction company, a very, very well-known construction company.
They're known for their high craftsmanship.
Everything they build is beautiful, really well done, top craftsmanship, except for one
thing.
Last 13 jobs that they made didn't make any money.
What was the problem?
The problem is the people on the teams are doing very good work, but they're not getting
information about what things cost.
And so we began a process in the organization of sharing week to week financial data, how
they're doing, what things are costing, and people began to say, not just, let's order
this instantly, I need it tomorrow.
They began to say, well gee, if I order this tomorrow, I'll get it, but it'll cost me three
times as much money.
Maybe there's a way that I can operate differently and wait a little bit and wait for the normal
order to come in.
And as people began to have more information, they began to calibrate their own actions
in the direction of more productivity.
And in situation after situation, people are finding that if you inform people about not
just what you want them to do, but why you want them to do it, the chances are it's a
little scary.
People may say, well, you want to accomplish this, you could do it this way better.
That's the danger.
What the benefit is, is you have people all working together to make a difference.
One of the third things is participation.
Is people need to participate in the decisions in doing their work the way that they want
to do it, rather than tell them how to do it.
Now the pyramid has a certain role, has a certain way that supervisors act, a certain
way that employees act.
And when you begin to shift to an empowered workplace, everything begins to change.
You find that the concept of power is different.
One of the things in the old workplace is kind of the idea that if I have power, you
don't.
Power is making you do something.
But if you think about it, the kind of power that makes a difference in the workplace is
the power to get things done.
And when you ask people who are empowered if they feel that they have power, they say,
sure, I really have the power to do what I want.
I can make decisions.
I can get things done.
But you ask the people around them, do they feel less empowered?
Do they feel unempowered?
Because the person next to them is empowered.
And you find out that people indeed in an empowered workplace, everyone feels empowered.
And I've begun to think that in the pyramid, nobody really feels empowered.
I have a lot of sympathy for a traditional supervisor.
I am judged by my results.
I know that all the people in my group are kind of feeling resentful and don't really
want to work.
And I have to tell them what to do.
I am always in terror of my job.
So I don't really have power, even though I can tell people what to do.
And the people in my work group don't really have power.
So everybody in a traditional organization really feels powerless.
And that's why the empowered organization is only one where people collaborate and work
together.
Now, teaching managers how to shift to empowerment is really difficult.
Manager has a instinct, has a reflex.
And whenever a job is given to this manager, the manager says, this is my problem.
How many people have you heard say, I have to get the scheduling done.
I have to get this report.
I have to do this.
I have to do that.
And I always say, wait a minute.
Who are the people that are involved in this?
And they say, well, this, this, this, and this.
I'm working on one company person said, I'm working on my strategic plan.
And the idea was the manager would work for weeks and weeks at home on the strategic plan
and then announce it to the people in the work group.
Well, what happens if you begin to shift?
And you say, every time I have a problem, you change in your own mind, put on we.
We have a problem.
Another example, I work a lot in healthcare, has to do with scheduling.
And one of the terrible burdens on nursing supervisors and supervisors generally is scheduling
people for a 24 hour day organization.
Well think about it.
What if you just say, hey, we got to cover this, this service for 24 hours a day.
We got eight people, here's a book, come up with the schedule.
Now people may have a little difficulty at the beginning.
They may be a little confused.
But by and large, all the problems around scheduling begin to disappear when people
begin to collaborate and work together.
So what I see happening in the workplace is the shift from these old pyramids simply because
like the dinosaurs, they're dying of their own weight.
They just don't work.
Organizations need to become adaptive.
And the only way that they can become adaptive is to unleash the power and the capacity of
the people.
Because if they don't unleash people's capacity and people's commitment, people won't stay
around and they won't be able to get the job done.
When they've pared themselves to the bone, when they've downsized, the only way for an
organization to work, since people can't work 24 hours a day, is to rethink the way that
they're working.
And we're seeing workplaces now where teams of people are coming together and slowly getting
over their anger and resentment at the layoffs, at the confusion, and beginning to say, gee,
maybe something is in it for me to make a difference in this organization.
Maybe there's some way that I can make a difference, that I can become part of a change that can
make the organization achieve greatness.
Getting away from the idea that the CEO will do it, people are beginning to see that each
team has to decide to become empowered.
So people are beginning to say, gee, who does it take to call a team meeting?
How many people does it take to say, let's get together and talk about how we're working?
And you begin to see how the ideas of the pyramid block you from doing the things that
need to be done.
And I want to invite everybody to begin to see that empowerment is not something that
can be delivered to you on a platter.
Empowerment is something that you need to create, that the future of your company is
not necessarily going to come from your CEO or your manager saying, here, we're going
to get empowered, but from people in the middle of the organization beginning to rattle the
bars of the cage and begin to say, hey, we have to operate differently.
And empowerment is something that will just radiate out.
The age of entitlement is over.
It's what one management theorist says.
And what she means is that the old organization that could give you job security, that could
give you security, that could take care of you for a lifetime is over.
And what it's being replaced by is your own inner sense of portability and security.
As you work in the organization, you need to understand that the organization can give
you as much as it can, but in the end, you are the one who's responsible for making a
difference and for guiding yourself through the different stages of the organizational
change and growth.
Everybody in the new organization will have to take on a different sense of responsibility.
The old organization, there was one CEO, one management team, and everybody did as they
were told.
In the new organization, everybody is the way the CEO was in the old organization.
Everybody has two jobs, which means you're responsible for getting something done in
the organization, but you're also responsible for making a difference and helping the organization
to grow.
And if you're going to be able to help your organization into the new generation, from
the pyramid to the circle, then you yourself will have to begin to initiate change.
You can call a team meeting.
You can suggest a new way.
You can begin to lobby for something that you believe in.
You can challenge and question things that are happening in the organization.
You are the first place to look for empowerment.
Empowerment is not something that can be handed to you on a platter.
Here, here is your empowerment.
Take it.
Have it for dinner.
Empowerment is something that is an attitude.
It's a shift of behavior.
It's a new way of operating, and it begins from you.
Organization can support empowerment, but if the organization is to begin to shift,
then you just have to assume that many people in the organization will begin to act differently.
And as you begin to be empowered, you will join her, and you will join, and you will
join, and there will be enough people in the workplace to create a force that makes a difference
and move the organization towards empowerment.
Thank you.