Editorial

Citation

Wing, L.S. (1998), "Editorial", Empowerment in Organizations, Vol. 6 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/eio.1998.11806eaa.001

Editorial

Establishing the rhythm and pace of an organization takes an incredible amount of time and foresight. How much authority, how many rules and procedures, the nature of leadership and supervision and how much supervision is necessary, etc....each of these considerations needs to be carefully thought through and discussed with an understanding of the market served by the organization.

In a recent discussion with an executive of a brokerage house in the United States, I engaged the executive in a discussion about how much bureaucracy and attending supervision was required in this organization. My basic assumption at the start of that conversation was that I would do some fact finding as a consultant to the organization around the nature of leadership in that organization and the relationship of the design of leadership to the marketplace that the organization serves.

An inherent characteristic of the stock brokerage business is that the business is always in motion. Today's business cannot be construed to be the same as tomorrow's business. A brokerage house that serves a marketplace which exhibits random variation is placed in a position where the policies and practices in place today may not serve the marketplace of tomorrow. Flexibility, and yet clarity, are important features of the organizational design, and of the attending leadership policies and practices.

In a brief discussion with this executive, he described a truly self-organizing, empowered system of organization design within his brokerage house. Individuals are capable and responsible (two important considerations for your leadership team) of making decisions on the move in order to meet the needs of the population served. This organization has done a careful job of identifying the unique policies and practices which need to be in place to assure legitimate business practice, especially when dealing with capital resources of private investors. But, these legitimate business practices are not at the expense of designing into the day to day business practice the flexibility required of everyday interactions with customers.

In the course of the discussion with this executive about his business practices, he mentioned that several other brokerage houses in the United States had approached him, asking them to join their management team. He has declined in every instance, as he characterizes those brokerage houses as having too much bureaucracy, taking the art out of supporting customers in the manner he believes is necessary. He expressed that he had not thought through exactly what his concern was in declining those brokerage houses, but realized after our discussion that the very reason he declined them was that they have not aligned their business practice to serve the random variation of the customers they serve.

An important learning. Organizations do need to mirror the constituency they serve. If the marketplace you serve is one of random variation, the organization needs to reflect the ability to meet that random variation. If it cannot mirror that need, there will be dissonance immediately between the customer and the organization.

From this vantage point, it becomes easy to identify those industries which may want to consider self-organizing, empowered organizational environments within which employees act artfully on behalf of the clients they serve. This doesn't have to mean that there is an absence of structure necessary for good business practice. It does mean that the structure which is in place for good business practice needs to be carefully thought through to match the needs of the customers and the business needs themselves. The recipe-oriented structures which are referred to as functional structures may not serve good business practice in certain industries.

These writings are meant to provoke thinking on the part of the reader about his or her organization, and the current structural design in place. How do you believe your structure serves your customers. Have you thought through the structure and the needs of the organization and the customer, or do you have a traditional organizational structure in place? Is the organization you have in place one you are comfortable with, or one which surpasses the customer's expectations for customer satisfaction?

Arie deGeus (1997) has written an important contribution to the world of organization called The Living Company: Habits for Survival in a Turbulent Business Environment. In the book, deGeus makes a case for "managing organizations as communities of human beings instead of as economic entities". deGeus has us understand like no other author that we are serving human beings as human beings within organizations. Understanding the meaning and needs of the people we serve speaks to how we can go about doing the most effective job possible in serving our customer community. While he doesn't speak necessarily about the specific term "empowerment", he writes about clarity, cohesion, commitment, dignity, respect, and decision making as a learning activity. These are terms common to the notion of empowerment and our ability to do the right thing on behalf of the customer we serve. He makes a case for the "Tolerant Company"...one that learns from its mistakes. But, it isn't the organization that learns, it's the people within the organization that are learning, living beings. Again, the notion of empowerment is clear in his work.

The book makes clear this idea of the turbulent environment and the optimization of the talents and skills of the individuals within the organization to meet the changing needs of the environment. Empowerment is not an exclusive concept for only the daring...it may be a basic philosophy necessary to survive in an ever-more competitive, global business environment.

Linda S. Wing

Reference

DeGeus, A. (1997), The Living Company: Habits for Survival in a Turbulent Business Environment, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA.