Aligning Organizational Structure for Motivation
How Empowerment Increases Enthusiasm in the Workplace
Aug 12, 2009
Achieving high levels of empowerment though requires a close examination of appropriate organizational structure. Form follows function is a principle associated with modern architecture and industrial design. It states that the shape of a building should be primarily based upon its intended function or purpose and that same principle applies to organizational design.
Aligning Organizational Structure for Higher Employee Motivation
One hundred years ago the elevator allowed for the construction of tall buildings and the ensuing top down organization structures. Today the Internet offers the possibility for a different model, one that reflects the high levels of empowerment desirable in organizations today.
A driver of this new model is the fact that the efforts companies are putting forth to help their people grow will be futile without the element of empowerment and that function has to follow a new form.
To understand the potential and the challenges of empowerment, consider how the Internet is organized. Instead of centralizing its complexity, it drives it out. By doing so, the Internet gains enormous agility and capability. The massive workload of electronic transactions taking place each second is divided up and widely distributed.
Each network node is powerful enough to accomplish its role. There is no reliance on the center for command and control. Cut out a piece, trim some linkages and it is still able to function. The overall architecture and underlying standards integrate the whole of the network into something much greater than the sum of its parts.
How Empowerment Increases Enthusiasm in the Workplace
Like the Internet, empowerment pushes complexity out to individuals and groups capable of engaging it. The buck doesn’t “stop here” anymore and management at the center of the company no longer assumes responsibility for the bulk of the workload. Instead, that workload is broken down into more manageable segments and shouldered by those who understand their piece best. This engages employees and increases their motivation.
Empowerment signals that everyone in the organization is accountable for his or her actions. In a truly empowered organization, the buck will drift around, stopping where it must but never pausing too long in one place. At times, things get confusing and can appear to be somewhat out of control, but in the end, like the Internet, the whole of the organization becomes much larger than the sum of its parts.
The development of the Internet would have been impossible without certain software, operating systems, and telecommunications standards. Without standards, the Internet could never have been contrived. Empowerment also relies on certain standards to make things efficient enough. Standards in this case apply to issues such as decision ownership, cultural patterns relating to communications models, decisiveness, inclusion or exclusion, and organizational structure.
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