Hmmm. Empowerment sounds hard: why bother?
This post is part of the Your Plan of Action series for those new to the executing team (also called management by some. But not by the enlightened readers of this site.).
To achieve success that goes beyond what one person can accomplish, you’ve got to create a team that can get things done without you. In other words, they have to be empowered. But in order for them to make the right decisions they’ve got to know what’s important, and so you must inform and infuse your goals and vision into your team.
Are you in the way?
Anytime you must approve or review something, you create a bottleneck. What you need in order to create a standout success of your project is the minimum number of bottlenecks. There is only one of you, and five, ten, or one hundred members on your team. If you create an environment in which no one but you knows where they are headed, you’ll have to make all the decisions for everyone.
Big or small, the problems will come to you. In the best case, you won’t get any of your own work done because you’ll be constantly fielding questions. In the worst case, no one else will get anything done either because they’ll all be waiting for you as you deal with their teammates’ problems. Every bottleneck is added risk of failure. Avoid becoming one.
Multiplying opportunities
Empowerment is also vital to success because it multiplies your opportunities for breakthrough. We bring to every situation we face the lens of our past experience. No two people have the same past experiences, which means that everyone’s lens is at least slightly different. These lenses provide us with our perspective, and it is through these lenses that each of us evaluates and analyzes situations and challenges.
Breakthroughs are achieved when someone thinks outside the box and comes up with a new way of addressing the challenge at hand. If no one is informed and infused with your vision and goals but you, then you are the only one who even knows where the box is. Unfortunately, because you’ll be solving everyone else’s problems, you won’t have any time to think outside of it.
