Barra wanted to change GM’s 10-page dress code to a simple, two-word one, ‘dress appropriately.’
Her staff didn’t agree.
But the HR department ironically posed my first hurdle. They started arguing with me, saying, it can be ‘dress appropriately’ on the surface, but in the employee manual it needs to be a lot more detailed. They put in specifics, like, ‘Don’t wear T-shirts that say inappropriate things, or statements that could be misinterpreted.’”
The kind of detailed instructions the hr staff wanted to add may not seem like that big a deal, but the underlying implication is that the company didn’t trust them. Remove the details and you have a radically different result.
“But if you let people own policies themselves—especially at the first level of people supervision—it helps develop them. It was an eye-opening experience, but I now know that these small little things changed our culture powerfully. They weren’t the only factor, but they contributed significantly.” (…) By simply stating “dress appropriately,” Barra does exactly what she asks of other leaders: She avoids assumptions, instead choosing to trust her employees’ judgment—and has found the experience remarkably liberating.
Not to mention successful.
If that attitude works in a company with 180,000 employees it will probably work for you.
If you’re a guy you may not have paid much attention an ad from Always.
It looks at how #like a girl has always been an insult and an effort to change that perception.
“In my work as a documentarian, I have witnessed the confidence crisis among girls and the negative impact of stereotypes first-hand,” said Lauren Greenfield, filmmaker and director of the #LikeAGirl video. “When the words ‘like a girl’ are used to mean something bad, it is profoundly disempowering. I am proud to partner with Always to shed light on how this simple phrase can have a significant and long-lasting impact on girls and women. I am excited to be a part of the movement to redefine ‘like a girl’ into a positive affirmation.”
But the insult goes far beyond the days of puberty.
Remember Blackberry, better known as the crackberry?
Remember the almost universal predictions of its imminent demise last year?
To paraphrase Mark Twain, “The reports of its death were greatly exaggerated,” and it’s moving towards turning around.
What changed?
The boss and the culture.
When John Chen took over as CEO his workforce was demoralized—no positive news and a constant focus on the problems the company was facing.
And that’s what Chen set out to change.
Instead of a culture focused on challenges, AKA, also known as problems, he crafted a culture of innovation by doing the following (read his post for the details).
Although Chen is focused on turnarounds, his approach and execution is applicable to any boss who wants a culture that attracts good people, motivates them to become great and retains them because they believe in the vision, as well as enhancing innovation and juicing initiative.
As Chen says at the end of his post,
All in all, a turnaround culture is one that enables everyone to pitch in to get things done. That requires focusing on a goal, and empowering employees to take risks and go the extra mile.
The kinds that help the person think through the effects, reactions and repercussions of proposed actions/solutions.
Questions that don’t include what/why/when/how you would do whatever.
The secret isn’t the questions, it’s the fact that Benioff isn’t directing the answers, isn’t even interested in having an opinion and getting his way. He’s also not interested in solving the problem for his employee.
Leading questions sans ego help clarify both the question and the answer.
Amazing how empowering interaction with an authority figure can be when that person gets off their dignity and doesn’t need to vest their own ego in the solution.
I don’t believe in “leaders.” Over the years I’ve spoken out many times against the idea that leaders are anointed and graced with special abilities, but am a big proponent of people showing initiative when it makes sense and stepping up to lead because they are the best person at that point.
Believing in initiative means I don’t believe in “followers.”
Followers rarely show initiative, make decisions or speak out when they disagree.
Followers have abdicated responsibility in favor of their “leader.”
Rather than saying the same stuff I’ve said before I thought you might ‘hear’ it better from someone like David Marquet, who, as the new captain of the nuclear powered submarine USS Santa Fe, “thought I would be a leader who empowered his subordinates.”
His wake-up call came when he ordered an action that couldn’t be done, but the officer passed it on anyway because he was told to by his “leader.”
Marquet offers first person proof that real “leadership” and “empowerment” don’t occupy the same space as “followers.”
I sincerely hope you will take the few minutes to click over and read something that could (should) have a profound effect on your management approach.
My thanks to Dan McCarthy at Great Leadership for including this guest post on his blog.
“Thinking about how I can empower my employees to be a part of the growth and innovation of the company.”
While employee empowerment is acknowledged as of key importance, it is an elusive goal for many CEOs, executives and managers. What makes Hsieh different?
Security.
Hsieh is comfortable in his own skin; secure in his own competency and limitations, so he doesn’t need to be the font from which all else flows.
As he points out, one good idea a day from him won’t come close to matching one good idea a year from each employee and not just the highly visible ones.
Some of the best ideas come from places a CEO would never have thought of.”
But employee empowerment often hits a positional brick wall that starts with the CEO and filters down through the ranks of the company’s positional leaders.
There are thousands of executives and managers who are insecure and the level of their insecurity defines to whom they will listen.
Most CEO’s who look at their corporate culture from the top-down are really preventing their company to grow faster, better, and more profitably.
And Just as true for other positional leaders as it is for the CEO.
What is most ironic is that by empowering employees, listening to everyone, adopting the good ideas without prejudice and publicly acknowledging their source does as much to enhance you as it does to push your group/company to greater success.
There is much talk about how empowering workers juices creativity and hikes productivity.
Some companies claim that the best empowerment comes from eliminating full-time employment completely so that workers can move freely from one company to another.
My own opinion is that while that may work for a small percentage, it will have the opposite effect on the great majority.
Google’s Eric Schmidt says, ”Employees have to feel empowered. That’s what makes people love what they do and where they work,” but if they don’t really work there why should they love it?
Before the turn of the century, Bill Gates said “As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others,” but many leaders seem more interested in accumulating, holding and controlling power.
They don’t understand that doing so makes them smaller and weaker, whereas, as Barbara Colorose said, “The beauty of empowering others is that your own power is not diminished in the process.”
Scott Adams has another take on the subject. He says, “I’m slowly becoming a convert to the principle that you can’t motivate people to do things, you can only demotivate them. The primary job of the manager is not to empower but to remove obstacles.”
While I don’t agree about the motivation, I do agree about removing obstacles—and one way to do that is to empower people with enough authority to do their job.
Way back in the late seventies I was telling clients that their company culture was important. I didn’t use the term, because it was considered ‘smoke and mirrors’; but culture has always been the deciding factor when a person joins a company or leaves and also the bedrock of innovation and productivity.
From tiny Elk River, MN, where a local president says, “Sportech’s culture is one of the company’s top competitive advantages,” to Canada where “Canada’s most-admired corporate cultures are outperforming the rest — despite the economic downturn” to Internet powerhouses like Amazon and Zappos to Southwest Air Lines all credit their strong performance to their cultures.
Yum Brands is hitting its current marks and laying the foundation for the future with a massive cultural overhaul.
Yum! Brands, the owner of chains such as KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, Dave Novak, the chief executive, is presiding over a training programme that he says is the “biggest culture-change initiative in the world today”, affecting all of the firm’s 1.4m workers spread across 112 countries.
Culture drives the success of the Ritz-Carlton according to its president Simon F. Cooper.
A culture is built on trust. And if leadership doesn’t live the values that it requires of the organization, that is the swiftest way to undermine the culture. No culture sticks if it’s not lived at the highest levels of the organization.
From the start, right along with the marketing and financial plans, Administaff co-founder Paul J. Sarvadi focused on a culture that would empower employees.
…very few people spend the amount of time and effort to develop their people plan,” says Sarvadi, co-founder, chairman and CEO of Administaff Inc. “What’s their people strategy? What is the culture they want in their company? What is their organization and leadership philosophy for the company? How do they want to award people?
Once upon a time Covidien was Tyco Healthcare (yes, that Tyco), a company going no where. It agitated to be spun off, dropped a toxic name, changed its culture and is now a $10 billion 41,000 employee global innovation powerhouse.
Covidien had to make changes to everything from its product development process to its employee evaluation and compensation program.
Whether you’re part of a giant enterprise or an individual out on your own reading stories about how other companies embedded the right combination of hard practices and the right MAP in their culture will show you what to do.
Sure, you’ll have to tweak the idea to fit your needs, but you’ll be surprised how similar the basics are once you strip away the trappings.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
I don’t believe in “leaders.” Over the years I’ve spoken out many times against the idea that leaders are anointed and graced with special abilities, but am a big proponent of people showing initiative when it makes sense and stepping up to lead because they are the best person at that point.
According to Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, his 
There is much talk about how empowering workers juices creativity and hikes productivity.
Way back in the late seventies I was telling clients that their company culture was important. I didn’t use the term, because it was considered ‘smoke and mirrors’; but culture has always been the deciding factor when a person joins a company or leaves and also the bedrock of innovation and productivity.
