In the last two years, the word "empowerment" has appeared more and more frequently. It is mentioned not only by Alibaba's Jack Ma, Tencent's Ma Huateng, Jingdong's Liu Qiangdong, but also by many new-generation entrepreneurs. Whether it is a statement at the site of financing or the release of innovative strategies, the rate of mention of "empowerment" is increasing. From the external level, only to the customer empowerment, in order to realize the mission vision, the wishful thinking of the product-oriented, doomed to the decline of the enterprise to the point of no return; from the internal level, only to the staff empowerment, in order to achieve the strategic landing, top-down management control, doomed to be the ceiling of the enterprise to become stronger and bigger.
However, the ideal is very rich, the reality is very dry. Employee empowerment, easy to say, difficult to do. In the end, where is the difficult nickname? Specifically, to achieve employee empowerment, enterprises have "three difficulties".
First, the difficult cognitive thinking in the managers
From the father of scientific management, Taylor began, has been to Fayol, Drucker, the goal, plan and control is always the main theme of the managers, set the goal, promote the plan, the process of control, and has become the necessary skills for each manager to achieve team performance.
Therefore, in the view of many managers, performance is planned, performance is controlled, performance is checked, which is certainly true. However, if there is only plan, only control, only check, then between the upper and lower levels, there is only command and obey, decision-making and implementation of the relationship between. Whether the goal is good or not, the plan is accurate or not, the implementation of the right, it becomes the key between the upper and lower levels. Moreover, the relationship between the upper and lower levels, from the earliest division of labor and collaboration, transformed into contradictions and conflicts, coupled with differences in human personality, emotions and habits, management has become a game of cat and mouse: superiors to desperately build the rules, subordinates to desperately looking for loopholes, and then the other party's behavior, to prove their initial judgment, into a vicious circle of the weeks and years.
Second, the difficulty in the enterprise management model
From Max Weber put forward the "hierarchical", "the", "the", "the", "the", "the", "the", "the" and "the". From Max Weber proposed "hierarchy" (bureaucracy), decentralization and centralization of the organization control model, has become the preferred choice of most companies. Undeniably, on the division of labor and organizational stability, the advantages of the bureaucratic system is very obvious, Weber even used the "perfect bureaucrat" to describe the unique value of the pyramid system in the development of the organization. At the same time, with the large-scale production in the industrial era, the pyramid system of organization, organizational efficiency and division of labor combined to achieve the upper and lower consistent, resource allocation, but also gave birth to the later process system, project system and resource planning model, in the level of organizational development.
However, the arrival of the mobile Internet era has made decentralization an inevitable choice. In this case, want to promote employee empowerment, will encounter the pyramid structure of the fierce confrontation, section of the hierarchical management model, but also gradually become synonymous with the rigidity of the enterprise organization. Whether it's Haier's creator system or Vanke's business partner mechanism, they all point to the proposition of decentralization. That's why, despite the fact that flattening has become a major trend in business, activating the individual is still a problem.
Third, it is difficult in the behavioral inertia of employees
If cognition determines the height of a person's thinking, then behavioral habits will determine a person's career path. And it is precisely behavioral habits, so that many people in the career development of bottlenecks and obstacles, and become excellent and mediocre demarcation line.
This has to be understood from two perspectives. The first perspective is that because you can't think, you can't do. Since it is impossible to advance at the cognitive level, the so-called change, in the view of the person concerned, becomes a kind of compulsion and difficult. Although there will be a few people who will develop behavioral habits in the compulsion, most people will not be able to tolerate it, or choose to break up and give up if they can't hold on to it; the second angle is that even if you want it, you still can't do it. The meaning of this sentence is that many people react quickly at the cognitive level, for example, in the current era of mobile Internet, he may have an insight into the trends of artificial intelligence, blockchain, big data, **** enjoyment of the economy, etc., and also start to do the change and transformation, but as soon as they encounter challenges and problems in reality, they habitually act according to the way of thinking of the past, or they directly choose to retreat, and simply escape back to their original comfort zone, turning a blind eye to the change and pretend that nothing has happened. Both perspectives clearly tell us that we have underestimated the influence of behavioral inertia in the past, and if we can't break free from the original behavioral inertia, we want to carry out the "employee empowerment", which may really be wishful thinking.
Back to the manager's point of view, in the "employee empowerment" level, managers often also have three misunderstandings:
The first misunderstanding is that everything can be "empowered"
No distinction between the object, do not distinguish between the stages of development. Not distinguish between priority, the talk of empowerment, immediately promote all staff, which often makes those who do not have the goal, lack of experience, lack of professional experience of the staff caught off guard, or, empowerment becomes a sheep, the team let loose, and ultimately the loss is not worth it.
Therefore, managers should be cautioned that the myth of "empowerment" must not be. Give employees "empowerment" is not the same as everything can be empowered to start from the actual situation of employees, play the role of goals, plans, counseling, incentives for the management, to help employees enter the benign development track, rather than letting the staff self-sustaining, I am afraid that they are not responsible for their own way of management. Some employees, to take the initiative to empower, some employees, to strengthen the management, one-size-fits-all "empowerment", and ultimately hurt the employees and the company.
The second misunderstanding is that decentralization as "empowerment"
Relative to the centralized management in the past, a certain degree of "decentralization" of managers, of course, can be regarded as an effective way of "employee empowerment". "The first step is to make sure that you have a good understanding of what you are doing and how you are doing it. However, decentralization is not the same as empowerment, if you give the power does not give support, give the power does not give constraints, give the power does not give the opportunity, then, such a decentralization, in fact, is a transfer of responsibility is just, for managers, the so-called empowerment, not only to give the staff the right to responsibility, but also to give the staff the opportunity and the platform, such empowerment, in order to help the staff to enhance their ability.
Take the Haier Creator model as an example. starting in 2014, Haier's employees became creators, middle managers became small micro masters, high-level platform masters, so that the nearest employees to the front-line customers become the main body, around the end customer demand, Haier's senior managers of the employees for platforms, resources, opportunities for in-depth docking support. At the same time, for the staff's ability to weaknesses to provide the necessary guidance and training, in this case, employee empowerment has become the whole organization resource coordination, the key link of the strategic landing, employee empowerment has become the activation of individual strategic choices.
The third misunderstanding is that empowering others, forgetting themselves
This is especially important to remind managers. To empower others, you must first empower yourself. There is no "self-empowerment" of the manager, how can realize the staff empowerment? Therefore, managers should ask themselves, how to realize self-empowerment? This is to return to the original meaning of "empowerment", as a term in positive psychology, empowerment has been introduced into management, mainly through the words and deeds, attitude, environmental change, give others positive energy, therefore, the manager's own words and deeds, attitude and habit change, is the starting point of employee empowerment, most of the time, if the enterprise's In most cases, if a handful of CEOs are unable to realize self-empowerment, if a large number of middle and senior executives are still stuck in the past management style, the luxury of talking about employee empowerment, it is simply fanciful, it is just a chase after the popularity of self-deception.