Empower! What else?

Do you want to lead a firm that makes highly differentiated products which are specialty protected; where the work force is involved and highly flexible; where customers line up and profits are pouring? No, it isn’t a copy of an employment ad. It reads like a dream. It would be your reality, if you were to work towards it. How? By Empowering your work force, what else?


Empowerment is not a new term. It is perhaps as old as civilization it self. I came across a line by Vivekkanand, “Cure of weakness doesn’t lie in thinking about Weaknesses. Instead it lies in teaching the Weak about the Powers they already have.”


If your response to such a proposition is- “If I tell them how good they are, then surely they’d demand more money. And I am not going to act on such an idea that leads to giving them more money!” Such a response is an Impulse Response. Try to recall, how many of your impulse purchases have been worth the money except for the joy of the moment. Apart from that Kala Khatta Baraf Ka Gola, a very few I am sure. So what happens when you disregard such an impulse that came from influences you carry as a result of indoctrinated in the old school of business, where Katouti is the only acceptable principle. Of course nothing fruitful happens. How about this response- “OK, if you want more money, then help me make more money and take your pick.” It does begin to sound better, isn’t it? With a little diplomacy and conferring you can have a new wave of profits hitting your shore, and there’s nothing unethical about it.


Before we move ahead, let me share some details of a Howard Business Review article I read in Times of India, some 15 – 16 years ago. It was about a certain manufacturing company that was owned and run by a woman for nearly 25 years. She was deeply involved in every thing about the company. She would attend to every small detail, from billing to maintenance. She made all the decisions. She herself conducted all the negotiations, did costing and even production planning – all by herself.


If she is coming across as an autocrat, then here are more facts. She saw her employees as family. She arranged costume parties for them. She loved listening to their personal woes and kept close track of employees’ children. It is a text book case of a benevolent, maternal autocrat. She also misbelieved that her employees loved her. Here I am reminded of an Indian Industrialist who is a devotee of Lord Ram. His favorites tell him that he is Lord Ram and each one of them is humble Hanuman. How such a charade would help the organization is not known but it is clear that employees tend to imitate such mythological relationship when there is no other clear agenda before them. Then they begin to take unproductive liberties with in the purview of such relationships and that American firm too was no exception. If any one didn’t have the right perspective, it was the woman owner, and for employees it was a joy ride.

Like many other American firms this one too had a Union of which the workforce was member. While the workforce did every thing to appear in love with the female boss, the union was ruthless in their pursuit of wage growth for its members. After all, the inflationary forces and growing up kids in the families dictated such a pursuit may be followed to the hilt.

For past several years, the firm was facing tremendous pressure on margins due to several of their competitors did not have unionized workforce. It was a tricky situation. If she did not cut the costs, she was doomed, and if she tried to cut the costs, union would call for strike and then again she’d reach the same spot. What happened under such circumstances happened in this case too. Under pressure of the situation she sold out. New owners wanted to learn the threads of business to which she agreed by staying around for a monthly fee. What then followed is a tale worthy of a movie script.

New owners were slow learners. Everything, all the organizational knowledge was in previous owner’s head, and she too didn’t have the correct perspective because of which she sold out. So what followed was a free for all conflicts, abusive and insulting episodes, loosing customers to competition, misunderstandings leading to loosing of key employees, and finally a strike call by union. Though the new management was clever enough to break the strike on the merit of the situation, but gone was the old good will between the owner and the workers. New owners decided to convert the adversarial relationship in to a productive one through workers’ participation in management and sharing of profits. In their vision, it would lead to empowerment of work force, but before that many hurdles were to be over come.

The work force that was darling of the previous owner and had called a strike against the new management had tasted defeat in the process. The resultant bitterness could not be wished away. It wasn’t a happy situation. New owners’ move to ask workers to participate in the management was being resisted. The first hurdle they set us was a syndrome called, “That’s not my job!” New owners would ask, “How to cut down on waste?” OR “How to allocate over time for this delayed order?” They would get replies that amounted to- “That’s not my job (to show you, how to)!” After all the old owner used to figure all such questions, though based on her experience, and never bothered the work force with such questions that would force them to think.

But the persistence paid off and such questions when answered were actually empowering the work force. The ensuing enthusiasm of the work force was matched by profit sharing program (by the new management). The program was implemented in a transparent manner. It involved sharing of very confidential data and information. The firm’s profits grew, and the worker’s trust in management also grew by the same measure. So much was their trust in the management and the profit sharing program that some time later when they were given option to choose between wage hikes or to continue in the profit sharing program, they voted in favor of the later. The clock of empowerment has run it’s full circle.

If you are considering a formal empowerment program, please check for the following essential ingredients and then embark the path:

• Clean and healthy working condition.
• Reasonable remuneration.
• Respect from colleagues, superiors and management.
• Opportunity for using work and work environment for personal growth.

Finally for those who like to entrust their future to their luck, some one has aptly said-

Fortune befriends the bold!