Peter Block: The Empowered Manager

In an empowered organization however, there is an increased sense of responsibility and sense of ownership at every level. This is especially evident at the front line, where customers are served, or products and services are delivered. For true empowerment to flourish, managers must give up much of their control to create an entrepreneurial environment. This will encourage employees to feel that they ‘own’ the organization and are ultimately responsible for its success.

Understanding Organizational Politics

Block argues that managers have a key role to play in creating a work environment in which empowerment can flourish. To do this, managers must first recognize the negative aspects of organizational politics that are at play both around them and within themselves, and choose to adopt a different approach.

Many managers will recognize aspects of negative organizational politics and political dynamics at play within their own team or organization, where people:

• manipulate others and situations to serve their own agenda
• manage knowledge and information for their own personal benefit
• name-drop and curry favor from those above them
• use relationships in a calculated way to further their career development
• tell partial truths and are cautious in the way they tell the truth to get ahead

Rather than continuing to play what Block calls ‘the bad game’ of using politics to serve their own personal agenda (e.g. to get promoted, achieve higher status or more power over others), Block suggests managers should instead choose to play ‘the good game’. This involves behaving and acting in a politically positive way. Making this choice is the first step towards empowerment.

Changing Your Mind-Set

Block identifies two opposing ways of thinking about organizational politics and their dynamics: the bureaucratic mind-set, and the entrepreneurial mind-set. Block identifies the entrepreneurial mind-set with acting in a politically positive way, and the bureaucratic mind-set with the negative image of organizational politics as outlined above.

Three distinct choices define whether or not a manager will adopt the entrepreneurial, positive approach to organizational politics. At any point in time, a manager can choose whether they will follow the entrepreneurial or the bureaucratic path by deciding between:

1. Maintenance and Greatness. This involves deciding between holding on to the status quo and safety of their organization’s accepted structure and governance, or attempting to turn their organization into something different, something entrepreneurial.
2. Caution and Courage. This describes a choice between being careful due to pressure from higher up in the organization or to confront issues when senior management may well not be on your side. Courage involves taking the unpopular path, for example by confronting problems where others act as if there is no problem, or saying that something is not going well when everyone believes the opposite is true. Block gives an important caveat that it is vital to be able to differentiate between actions which are courageous and those which are suicidal in career terms.
3. Dependency and Autonomy. This is a choice between depending upon the people in power for vision and direction, or having the attitude that you are personally responsible for your own actions, and your own choices. Block says that many managers and employees take the easy option of dependency by ‘blaming the gods’ for inaction or poor decision-making, rather than creating a team or department which is responsible and accountable for the decisions it makes.

While Block believes greatness, courage and autonomy are needed for the entrepreneurial mind-set to flourish, he recognizes that there are certain times where it is necessary to play it safe, namely:

• when someone is new to the job, or the work is changing to a direction in which they have little knowledge
• when the organization’s or department’s survival is at stake
• following a period of risk and expansion
• when an environment of zero trust exists

What Is Your Mind-Set?

When we choose to follow either the bureaucratic or entrepreneurial path, we are strongly affected by the cultural customs and accepted practices of our organization, as well as our own personal values. To understand how these factors influence how we behave, Block presents two opposing cycles of activity described by the two mind-sets: the bureaucratic and entrepreneurial cycles.

The Bureaucratic Cycle

As shown in the diagram below, the bureaucratic cycle is a self-reinforcing four-stage cycle which encourages bureaucratic and negative political behavior. Each stage leads to the next, resulting in a state of high dependency, which repeats the cycle.

1. The patriarchal contract: this is the basis of the traditional contract between employer and employee which emphasizes centralized control, clearly defined roles and responsibilities and the need for discipline, self-control and order.
2. Myopic self-interest: because the patriarchal contract emphasizes control and high authority, employees focus on moving up the hierarchical ladder of their organization to gain more control and authority, rather than on doing meaningful work.
3. Manipulative tactics: the combination of self-interest and a patriarchal contract results in manipulative behavior, i.e. controlling people without letting them know what you are doing. The belief being that manipulating others is essential to getting to the top is a central aspect of how negative organizational politics work.
4. Dependency: the first three stages in the cycle all conspire to create a system of high dependency. It encourages the belief that our survival at work is always in someone else’s hands.

To break this negative cycle, managers must not only begin to empower themselves, but create the conditions under which empowerment can flourish in their team. This involves a fundamental re-negotiation of the core contract between the manager and their organization, where managers can:

• Be their own authority rather than submitting to it.
• Encourage self-expression in themselves and their team rather than denying it.
• Make a commitment to the future success of their organization rather than making sacrifices for it.

The Entrepreneurial Cycle

By making the above choices, managers will move towards Block’s positive alternative, known as the entrepreneurial cycle. This uses politics to serve the organization, rather than the individual. This four-stage cycle of activity is fundamental to an entrepreneurial mind-set and forms the basis of empowerment. This mind-set promotes positive politics, with the goal of having all members of the organization taking responsibility for how it operates in the belief that it is their organization. As shown in the diagram below, each stage feeds into the next, this time in a more beneficial fashion:

1. The entrepreneurial contract: this relationship between employer and employee demands that individuals make a commitment to the organization not because they have to, but because they want to. People treat the organization as their own.
2. Enlightened self-interest: success is completely redrawn in terms of contribution to customers and other departments. Rewards come in the form of opportunities to learn and grow. Career advancement and pay are important, but they are not the only drivers.
3. Authentic tactics: the entrepreneurial contract encourages directness and authentic management behavior. This means being honest, letting people know where they stand, sharing information and sharing control of how the team or department operates.
4. Autonomy: the first three stages support the development of autonomy, where individuals own their actions. This state of mind diminishes the need for people to give so much power and attention to those above them in the organization’s hierarchy.

The Manager’s Role in Breaking the Cycle

Block says that managers have a critical role to play in creating the right conditions for empowerment. Implementing some of the following practical suggestions will help your team move towards the entrepreneurial cycle and true empowerment:

Give Your Team More Responsibility For Their Work

Block believes that the most valuable and productive employees are those who take personal responsibility for their work outcomes and the success of the team in which they work. One of the most important things you can do is to give your team members the opportunity to take on more responsibility for their work, and make decisions themselves. To help your team do this, you may need to give them some additional support, e.g. technical training or developing specific skills such as negotiation or conflict management to help them work together more effectively.

Introduce Self-Managing Teams

In self-managed teams, the team members, as opposed to the manager, are responsible for key functions such as recruitment, selection, scheduling and organization of work, purchasing of equipment and quality control. Although this might seem like a big step, gradually increasing your team’s responsibility in these areas (with your support) will encourage a greater sense of personal responsibility for the team’s outcomes. As the team’s manager, you become responsible for defining the overall output requirements for the team and negotiating with the rest of the organization for resources that the team needs.

Change the Team Structure

One of the key ways in which you can encourage a more empowered culture in your team is by changing its internal structure. In many traditional teams, the structure is represented as a pyramid with the manager at the top and team members at the lowest level. By introducing the principles of self-management and giving people a personal stake in key decisions you can effectively turn the team structure on its head with you at the bottom and team members at the top.

Adopt a Consultative Role

As you begin to give your team more responsibility, your approach should gradually evolve from a directive role to a supportive one. Providing advice and feedback should still be an important part of your role, but you should aim to guide your team towards solutions rather than controlling them or giving them instructions to follow. Your team need to know they can come to you if they have any problems, and that you will provide further guidance as necessary.

Set Broad Guidelines

In an empowered team, the manager should relinquish control in order to give team members more responsibility. In doing this, Block advises that it is important for your team to have a clear understanding of your expectations, as well as the parameters of their work. You can do this by providing a broad overview of the team’s objectives, and by making the connection between these activities and the achievement of your organization’s wider goals explicit.

Conduct Upward Appraisals

With upward appraisals, team members have responsibility not only for their own appraisal, but also have input into the appraisal of their manager. This means that both team members and managers have a common interest in each other’s success. Although it might seem difficult at first, why not ask your team to evaluate their own performance, but also how well you, their manager, have performed in terms of supporting the team and reaching their goals?

Allow Anyone to Call a Meeting

Staff meetings often have the significance of being the only time an entire team or department comes together. If only you can call a meeting, you are essentially controlling others by deciding what issues are and are not important. However, by giving everyone the responsibility and authority to convene and structure a meeting, your team will begin to see that they are empowered to decide what is important to them, and raise issues as they need to.

Use Assignments as Two-Way Contracts

Instead of using the traditional approach to delegating tasks and assignments to your team, where you express what you want to get out of the process, view the work as a two-way process. If you and your team member(s) are able to express your needs for the task, the process will be more productive and effective. So, when discussing new work assignments or projects with your team members, it is important to cover what you’d like them to achieve, and also give them an opportunity to decide how the work might best be carried out, and to ask what they would like from you in terms of support.

Tell People What They Are Doing Right

In many teams, people only receive feedback and support when mistakes have been made. Many managers (whether consciously or unconsciously) take the approach that as long as the work is completed to the required standards, they need not bother their team members. However, you can go a long way towards helping your team feel empowered by regularly highlighting what they are doing right and helping them build upon their successes. It is also important that you show your appreciation for good work to people in a direct way, and to give credit freely rather than withholding it.

Consider How You Evaluate Success

In most organizations, performance is measured and evaluated on an individual basis. This goes against the real meaning of teamwork, where people work together to achieve common goals. If appropriate, consider how you currently manage performance in your team, and whether your approach sets people in competition against each other (e.g. by rating and comparing performance) rather than working together. Why not introduce some new measures which evaluate performance in terms of how much people contribute to each others’ success, and help one another achieve their goals.

Conclusion

In The Empowered Manager, it is Block’s view that bureaucracy, power and politics should not be used for individual gain at the expense of the greater organizational good. He argues that managers have a key role to play by choosing to follow the entrepreneurial path. This means channeling their power and influence in a positive way to empower people to think, behave, and control their own work and decisions with autonomy.