No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.
An entrepreneurial journey begins with a single idea, a single thought, a single step; but it takes many ‘empowered decisions and efforts’ by co-passengers in the journey, to achieve goals and cross milestones! So, the next question arises – How can entrepreneurs make empowered decisions? Empowerment in business is a management practise of sharing information, rewards, and power with employees. This puts them at the heart of the organization by giving them power and autonomy. Fundamentally, empowerment is about the distribution of power and this should be a conscious endeavour on the part of entrepreneurs who wish to make ‘empowered decisions’. In organizations, this is most tangibly represented by decision-making authority — who has the power to make what kinds of decisions and all this leads to making decisions that bear desired results, in time.
How does empowerment help a business?
Employee empowerment is defined as the ways in which organizations provide their employees with a certain degree of autonomy and control in their day-to-day activities. A key principle of employee empowerment is providing employees the means for making important decisions and helping ensure those decisions are correct. For an entrepreneur, if this falls in place, half the battle is won! So, ensuring that there are appropriate and enough organizational structures and norms that support empowered decision-making, is a priority for entrepreneurs and leaders.
An empowered company encourages employees to actively look out for and solve problems. The main benefit of this is quality improvement and enhancing customer satisfaction. Empowered workers feel responsible for the industry reputation and consumer perception of their company. Hence, they not only take pride in their work, they also aid in making empowered decisions which in turn increase quality productivity and organizational growth.
Not every strike hits the bull’s-eye!
It should be understood that empowerment does not magically turn everyone into great decision-makers, nor does it suddenly equalize differences in skills and experience. Unless the organization’s decision-making processes are designed to ensure the quality of the decisions, empowerment efforts are destined to fail. Even worse, that failure can lead to bitterness and disillusionment. Thus, entrepreneurs should distribute decision-making authority in a way that truly empowers people, yet still protects the organization from undue risks that can come from uninformed decisions.
Empowering team members to make empowered decisions
In conclusion, we have gauged that employee empowerment can help entrepreneurs make empowered decisions that lead to unified progress. In turn, empowered decisions also instil greater trust in leadership, encourage employee motivation, lead to greater creativity, enhance organization’s growth and improve employee retention ー all of which ultimately results in a better bottom line. Here are some golden rules which entrepreneurs should follow to make empowered decisions in unison-
- Work toward common goals, but not a singular path. Employees will feel empowered from the start of any project when you make the decision-making process collaborative.
- Reinforce positive behavior at all levels of your organizational functioning to keep the atmosphere upbeat with positivity
- Open the lines of free communication to prevent any communication lags or misunderstandings
- Be an empowered mentor and take calculated risks.
The pyramid can be reversed –
It’s certainly true that innovation through prompt decisions, within an organization doesn’t have to come from the top down. When an organization is filled with smart and capable people, game-changing insights are just as likely to come from those on the frontline, dealing with customer issues day in, day out, as it is from the board room. Enabling front-liners to understand and act on the data they generate while carrying out their responsibilities means intelligence can be built into the company at every level, leading to empowered decisions and efforts which promise better outcomes and stronger growth.
Avtar Madan
Himanshu
Shree Lahiri
