Prologue
To Read or Not to Read

This opening is designed to help you make a good decision about whether to read this book. Writing a book about organizations is not like writing an international spy thriller. In a spy thriller, you can begin by describing the fog slowly rising off the river separating two Eastern European countries. You can have a train hurtling through the night. In the corner of one compartment are two men, unconscious, one of them clutching a business card with a seven-legged toad embossed in green ink. A woman arrives on the scene, reaches calmly into her purse, and on it goes. In the spy thriller, all of this happens in the first paragraph. You are hooked and off you go, knowing that you have found just the book you were looking for.

Finding a book about organizational life that has meaning for you is not so easy. You shouldn't have to read a hundred pages to decide whether you want to finish such a book. I want to tell you who this book is for, who should not read it, and what to expect in the pages to come.

The View from the Bridge

The Empowered Manager is written for two kinds of people: (1) managers involved in running an organization and struggling every day with how to create and leave behind an organization they personally believe in, one that expresses their deepest values about work, achievement, contribution, and the spiritual dimensions of life; and (2) those working somewhere in the middle of an organization and feeling powerless to make the changes they want and believing that some of their bosses are problems to be solved.

Our concern at the top of an organization is not only that the organization succeeds, but even more, that we leave behind a legacy that ensures strength in the future. To create and leave behind a strong organization requires building a culture in which people take responsibility for themselves and the organization. A culture in which dependency, blaming other groups, taking the safe path, seeking control for its own sake, and acting in self-serving ways are all minimized. That is what this book is about: creating an entrepreneurial spirit where all members of the organization feel responsible for creating a workplace they personally believe in.

Caring about these issues means we see ourselves as forces for change and improvement. It makes us somewhat radical in the midst of a workplace culture where the predominant concerns are safety, advancement, control, and the desire to hold someone else responsible for what is happening. In many ways this book is written for those with a conservative style and a radical heart. The radical heart keeps us focused on a vision of the future, on the opportunity, not the risk, of finding out what is possible. Our radical heart wishes to be practical but is willing to live in the wilderness, with its dangers, and it believes that organizations, as the primary meeting places for human beings, have only begun to reach their potential. Our radical heart, clothed in the company dress uniform of the day, wishes not only for high overall performance but also to work in a place where the best that life has to offer is expressed. If, as a manager, these somewhat idealistic, semi-spiritual, seemingly softheaded ideas have meaning for you, then you have found the right book.

The View from the Boiler Room

For those of us who work for a living and are somewhere in the middle, my intent is to offer both a specific mind-set and practical ways to support the belief that we have some control over our destiny.

Working in the middle of an organization creates certain predictable dilemmas for each of us. The most difficult struggle is between serving our personal ambition to get ahead and, at the same time, doing work that has personal meaning in a way that maintains our integrity and optimism. It is easy and seductive at times to experience a sense of pessimism that the organization will ever become the kind of place we wish it to be. It often seems that other people are driving the business, not us, and that our survival is, in fact, in someone else's hands. How do we go about changing a culture that involves thousands of people, most of whom, from a distance, seem quite satisfied with things the way they are?

The promise of this book is that it holds an antidote to the malaise of predictability and control and the isolation they incur. Within each of us is the ability to create an organization of our own choosing. When we believe that, it is good for us and good for the organization. That belief--that it is possible for me to create a place I believe in, even in the midst of a group of automatons, an empty desert, or a risky marketplace--is the entrepreneurial spirit. It is the key to being political in a positive way and having the strength to avoid the manipulative choreography we see going on around us.

This book is for any of us who feel that most organizations are still venues to discover what is possible. Our belief is that organizations are successful sometimes despite the way they manage themselves. We know that if we are going to spend the best days of our lives at work, work ought to be more than a job--and it is up to us to push the limits, regardless of our position. The desire for change, the search for better ways to handle what seem to be unsolvable problems, the wish to create something that carries our personal and collective stamp, all grow out of feelings of dissatisfaction, restlessness, and suffering. This book is designed to scratch the itch created by both uneasiness and hope.

Sorry, Wrong Number

You, however, may view things very differently. You may feel very strongly that your organization is, in fact, currently a living example of your own deepest beliefs. You may feel that it operates well enough, that it achieves its goals, and that what is needed is more of the same. You may be an advocate for clearer goals, better structure, and more willingness on the part of people to make sacrifices and to return to a set of values that seem to have existed in the past. You may long for greater respect for authority, a greater willingness to postpone gratification, and an understanding that work is work and is not meant to be the carrying vessel for life's wishes and dreams and values. You may feel that one's personal life and community life are the places for self-expression and individuality. You may argue at times that many of the jobs in today's organizations, by their nature, are intrinsically repetitive and hold no promise for meaning or great satisfaction. If these statements ring true, if you are essentially satisfied with how your organization operates and believe that the best hope for the future is an improved version of the present, then this book may not be for you.

What to Expect

My intent is to offer a mix of philosophy and practicality. If you have read even this far, you have encountered most of the philosophy behind the book. Some of the more practical ways this book might be useful relate to the basic goal of developing some control over our own destiny even though we are in the middle of the organization. The book outlines specific ways to:

• Clearly see the pressures on us to be fast, cautious, safe, and compliant (Chapters 2 and 3).
• Formulate contracts with our subordinates, peers, and bosses that encourage responsibility, interdependence, self-expression, and commitment (Chapter 4).
• Create a vision of the future for our unit that embodies our deepest personal beliefs about individuals and organizations (Chapter 5).
• Develop high-integrity strategies for dealing with adversaries, fence sitters, and opponents as well as allies (Chapter 6).
• Resolve within ourselves our own wish to be dependent and taken care of, and replace this in a way that honors our interdependence (Chapter 7).
• Discover the courage to do what needs to be done for ourselves and the organization (Chapter 8).
• Develop a strategy for change that we can control (Chapter 9).

Woven throughout the book are two additional themes:

1. Ways to not only claim our own autonomy regardless of the expectations of others, but also to sustain our interdependence with peers even if they don't seem interested.
2. Ways to develop specific methods for handling meetings, restructuring our units, managing communications, and developing other processes that align with our wish for how the organization should operate.

Empowerment is not a set of techniques. It is a choice, not a tool. If you fundamentally believe that leadership, direction, and control are best exercised at the top of our institutions and our society, then just say no to empowerment. Be the best parent you can be. Don't create expectations of partnership that ultimately you will not fulfill. Do you choose to move down the path of self-management? Is this a business strategy you believe in? If so, then over time you continually seek more and more ways to shift responsibility and control to the people doing the core work of the organization.

What Next

Each time you begin to bring empowerment ideas into your work situation, as you give your employees more and more freedom, expect a very mixed response. There is a part of each of us that does not want more autonomy, choice, or responsibility. We want to be taken care of. We like the patriarchal contract. We want our bosses to be good parents. Choosing ownership, agency, and partnership means giving up safety. None...