operations
management challenges

empowerment is not management
I consider empowerment a despicable word. I have always talked of responsibility and only of responsibility. If an organization is based on power, it makes no difference whether the power is at the top or at the bottom. One must push responsibility as far down as one possibly can. That leads to authority.
Peter F. Drucker
First-line management is usually comprised of the best performers promoted to team leaders, supervisors, and managers. While expert at the work, they have little training or aptitude for planning and assigning work. As service leaders, they have little control of or impact on productivity, so they function primarily as technicians and expediters.

Front-line service leaders need management control tools and culturally reinforced behavior that require them to habitually plan the work, assign the elements of these plans, and follow-up and adjust assignments using short-interval management techniques.

(For a reinforcing point of view see Myth: Management Should Take Every Opportunity To Involve Employees In Decision-Making And Problem Solving by Rebecca Braden Nordeman, Cornerstone Consulting, Inc.
Help Desk Online, 01 February, 2000
"An important distinction: involvement is not synonymous with empowerment… there are times when it is critical to involve employees and there are times when they simply do not want to be involved and shouldn't be involved."


desired outcomes are not processes
data is not information
empowerment is not management
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