GET SOMEONE ELSE TO DO YOUR WORK

They say that the further up the management tree you go in any organisation, the fewer bits of paper you’ll find on a manager’s desk. The guys at the bottom of the tree are buried in the stuff and the manager has a nice clear desk.

I can remember it being like that for me in a company where I was a middle manager. My job title was Sales Operations Manager and I was responsible for things like promotional activity, telesales, sales targets, budgets and all the admin functions. My boss, Tom, was the Sales Director.

I remember one report I produced for Tom. He asked me to come up with some recommendations for a new sales procedure that he wanted to implement. I spent hours on that report, doing the research, making phone calls and having meetings with colleagues. Eventually I had the masterpiece typed up with all my recommendations on what action we should take; even if I do say so myself, it was an excellent report. I took it into Tom’s office and he read it through; he asked a few questions and queried some of the detail. Eventually he said, ‘Well done, excellent, I suggest you go ahead and implement this.’ He went to hand me back my report and I said, ‘You keep that Tom, that’s your copy.’ He grunted something, took the report, screwed it up and threw it in the bin. My immediate inclination was to launch myself across his desk and rip out his windpipe. Luckily I resisted the temptation but boy did I feel angry!

It was only later, after I’d cooled down, that I thought about the matter with a bit more logic and less emotion. What did I expect him to do with this piece of paper? Fondle it longingly and admire it on his desk? I don’t think so. He’d read the report, he’d come to a decision and decided to move on. Tom knew that the report would be filed on my computer and that there’d be a hard copy stuffed into the bulging filing cabinet beside my desk.

I learned several lessons that day;

• 1Don’t keep so much paper hanging about.
• 2Make decisions quickly and move on.
• 3Get someone else to do your work!

I’m being flippant about that third part. However, as a manager you need to ensure that you’re not doing any tasks that you don’t really need to. There’s a saying that many managers should pay some attention to – ‘Only do it if only you can do it.’

So – don’t do it

We’re now getting into the area of Empowerment which was first introduced in the 1980s and became a bit of a management buzz word. However, I believe that it’s one of the most promising but least understood concepts in management today.

As you’ll have gathered by reading this book so far, I’m a fairly down-to-earth, practical sort of person. I’m not big into management theories unless I can see the benefits for me; I see a great deal of benefit for managers and team leaders in Empowerment.

I was empowered by my boss Tom although I don’t think he used it as a management tool or even understood what it was all about. However, his way of managing me by empowerment had benefits for both of us.

The benefits of Empowerment

Benefits for Tom

I described my job above. However, many of the tasks that I carried out would, in some organisations, be Tom’s responsibility. These were tasks that I could do much better than him. This meant that part of his job was being done better than he could have done it and ultimately made him look good.

With me doing many of the things that would normally be tasks for him, left him clear to do other things. One of Tom’s main tasks and one he was particularly good at was negotiating contracts with customers. And I must say, something he could do much better than me.

Our products were beer and other drinks. However, it wasn’t just a matter of negotiating a price with the customer. Our company lent money to the customer on the understanding that he sold our products alone. This was standard practice in the UK beer industry and there were various types of loans that could be negotiated with the customer. As I said, Tom was particularly good at this and spent a great deal of his time on it. As a result, he pulled in a great deal of business.

Now you might be thinking, ‘It’s all right for Tom but what about poor old Alan?’

Benefits for Alan

I was very happy with the situation. I had more responsibility than I might normally have. I was able to do my own thing and run things more or less how I wanted; all I had to do was regularly check things with Tom.

So at the end of the day, he was happy, I was happy and the business was happy. Tom was achieving his outcomes and he wasn’t getting stressed. I was achieving my outcomes, I was learning, developing and I was enjoying my job.

WHY USE EMPOWERMENT?

As you’re very much aware, this book is about motivating your team and minimising your stress; that’s why I’m encouraging you to empower your team. However, I’m aware that some organisations are into Empowerment and some aren’t. Some talk about it a lot and tell you that they practise Empowerment. However, in my experience it doesn’t happen nearly as much as it should. It may not happen in your organisation but that doesn’t mean that it can’t happen in your team. You can create a culture of Empowerment in your team which will have benefits for you and your people.

Let’s just reflect for a moment on what does motivate people at work. There has been all sorts of research done over the years and many books have been written about it (believe me, I’ve read most of them). I’m going to pull all of this information together in the last chapter of the book but for the moment, let’s consider some of the factors and not in any specific order.

We’ve already looked at feedback and acknowledgement. The majority of people will be motivated at work if they believe that their manager cares about them and gives them feedback, recognition and praise for a job well done. And just in case you’ve forgotten, we call this Confirming feedback.

However, people are motivated by other factors, such as the work itself. You might call this job satisfaction. Your team will be motivated if they:

• Find the work interesting.
• Know what’s expected of them.
• Have the opportunity to do what they do best.
• Are encouraged to develop, learn and grow.
• Have the feeling of being in on things, ownership and involvement.

These motivational needs can be satisfied by empowering your people, so let’s take a closer look at what Empowerment is all about.

UNLEASH THE POWER

Empowerment is about utilising the knowledge, skill, experience and motivational power that’s already within your people.

The majority of people in teams and organisations are severely underutilised. Your team have probably much more to offer in terms of skill, knowledge and experience, and if you utilise that you will achieve your outcomes and you’ll motivate them.

If you’re not sure about this then think about yourself for a moment. Do you think your manager uses your skill, knowledge and experience? Do you feel involved? Do you have a sense of ownership? Are your opinions considered? Do you have the opportunity to develop and grow? If you have answered ‘yes’ to these questions then you’re in an unusual situation and very fortunate. The majority of managers that I work with complain that they don’t experience any of these factors.

I’ve proved to myself with the teams that I managed that Empowerment works. However, initially it’s easier said than done. There needs to be quite a shift in thinking and a change of habits. Remember, the majority of people in work today are brought up with programs that say, ‘This is my job, I do what I’m told to do, I’m not paid to think and I’m not taking responsibility.’

So for you as the manager, it’s not just a case of telling your team that they’re empowered and that they have the authority to make decisions. They’ll probably just see it as you offloading some of your work onto them and they won’t respond positively to that.

LET PEOPLE KNOW WHAT’S HAPPENING

If you want an empowered team then they need to know what’s happening in the organisation and what’s happening in the team. If they don’t know what’s going on then they can’t be expected to make good decisions.

Most organisations nowadays supply information about what’s happening in the business and encourage managers to brief their teams. If there’s no procedure to brief you on what’s happening in your organisation, then let your manager know that you need that information so that you can brief your team. Use the procedure for Productive feedback that we discussed in the last chapter.

Give your team all the information you can, such as:

• How the organisation makes money
• What the costs are in running the company
• How it makes a profit
• Sales figures
• How to read a balance sheet
• How to read a profit and loss statement
• Customer complaints
• Customer compliments
• Absenteeism
• Surveys and research
• Marketing plans
• New products
• New policies and procedures
• Anything that relates directly to your team
• Anything that affects the business or the organisation

If you don’t feel confident delivering any of this information, then seek help from your colleagues. If, for example, finance is not ‘your thing’, then get one of your colleagues from the finance department to brief the team.

I was working with some managers at one of my clients recently and they were complaining that their senior manager never came out of his office to speak to their teams. My answer to that was, ‘Ask him!’ Some of the managers were giving me ‘I shouldn’t have to ask him’ comments and obviously weren’t going to do what I suggested. However, Bill, one of the managers, spoke to me a week later: ‘I asked the boss to speak to my team and he did. It was a big success and they really appreciated getting information from a senior manager.’

As I said in Chapter 2, we need to think about the programs we all live our lives by and question whether they’re holding us back or not. I now know that Bill will do what it takes to ensure that his team knows what’s going on in the organisation.

I recently attended a seminar on environmental issues in industry (not usually my subject but it was a good opportunity for networking). The presenter outlined a case history company where the employees were briefed on waste management within their organisation. Over a period of months the people in the business started to take actions of their own volition to reduce waste. They were concerned about the amount of money that the business was losing in handling waste and realised it could be money in their pocket.

They want to be involved

Your team want to know, they want to feel ‘in on things’ and be involved. They want to know the goals of the organisation, the goals of the team and what their role is in achieving these goals.

Some years ago when I was working at the brewery, I was invited along one day to a regional manager’s sales meeting. This was his weekly meeting with his team and he told me that he’d also invited a couple of the delivery guys to sit in. I was initially quite surprised at this because like many of my colleagues I didn’t have a particularly high regard for these delivery guys. These were the people who drove the trucks and unloaded kegs of beer and crates into pubs and hotels. They always seemed a belligerent group to me, always complaining about something and generally being unhelpful. I’d been involved in several situations where I had to solve an unhappy customer situation caused by a delivery driver. Of course, looking back on it now, it was just another case of people who were poorly managed. And of course, at that time, my thinking was pretty narrow as well.

There were three delivery guys at the sales meeting sitting round the table with the rest of the sales team. Initially they were fairly quiet but once the meeting really got going they became more involved. They wanted to know why the sales team weren’t finding more new business, why certain accounts had been lost, why we were selling the products we were and why we didn’t introduce new ones. They made some excellent suggestions and provided information to the sales team that they’d never heard before.

Ironically, these delivery people spent more time face to face with our customers than anyone else in the company did. They were delivering to customers every week and sometimes twice a week. And they had good relationships with many of these customers.

This meeting certainly opened my eyes to the fact that people want to know and they want to be involved in the business. If you let them, then it can be hugely beneficial.