The Role of Empowerment in Self-Direction

Grow the People and They will Grow the Business

May 27, 2009 Paul Larson

A self-directed workforce is a puzzle to most in management in the same way that land is a mystery to dolphins.

They may be masters of their domain and seem to be in control, but in a world of self-actualizing employees, they are completely out of their element. Companies today are looking to create and dominate emerging opportunities. A self-directed learning organization is a competitive advantage in exploiting those opportunities.

Those organizations that have achieved this state realize they simply can’t be disorganized or inefficient, except to people who don’t understand. They have achieved a true paradigm shift in the transformation of the governance model of an organization.

The Role of Empowerment in Self-Direction

People don’t produce well in spite of “loose” management practices such as self-direction. They produce well because of them. Self-direction begins with creating space for people. In many companies, creating this space is seen as losing efficiency. When managers truly create this space, though, they may lie awake at night worrying about what someone might be doing at that very moment.

Since most managers cannot live with this anxiety for too long they tend to err on the side of more control, not less. This leads to their tendency to assume the role of controlling managers who hold down the costs of output. This is the polar opposite of the role of empowering managers who use self-direction to focus on increasing the output per unit of cost.

A control-oriented manager might be more effective in a shrinking business but an empowering manager will most likely be more effective in a growing business.

Grow the People and They will Grow the Business

In looking at a successful human activity, a trait that consistently shows up is that success has been steadfastly rooted in the newly discovered capacity of the people involved. People have a natural tendency to expand outward and create networks. In doing so they become part of a larger system. These systems can be stimulated but they do not accept direction.

Systems like these can only be disturbed or provoked and that provocation comes from new information and knowledge. Facts about volume, cost, or quantity do not stir a system to action. The interest and meaning that comes from that information does get things in motion though.

This is why it is so difficult to transfer programs from one organization to another. These are not separate groups, they are separate systems. When organizations attempt to transfer programs, they are not disturbing the system with new information. They are insulting it with direction from the outside.

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Like Self-Control, Self-Direction is Powerful