Organizational Development: A Manual for Managers and ... - FPDL

them and changing the rules of the game. At the same time, they are also demanding more
meaning, more candour, and more fulfilment from their work. The organization must adapt and
grow and learn new ways to get the job done. The traditional organization needed only the bodies
of employees doing their clearly defined job and not asking questions. Today’s workplace needs
employees who can make decisions, invent solutions to problems, take initiative, and who are
accountable for results.” (Scott and Jaffe, 1991) Instead of keeping processes and people under
tight control, managers should create an environment where people want to be responsible and
are free to take actions. Real teams are the answer, of course.
For example, if the team goes to the boss to get special permission to receive some additional
materials from the store and then they receive the materials, they may waste them, because it was
already justified and approved by the boss. In another case, a team may be free to go to the store
at any time and receive any materials, but everyone agreed that the price of materials in excess of
a normal amount would be deducted from the total salary or premium of the group. Their actions
are not under direct control any longer; they may do whatever they want - but they will never
misuse it, because they are responsible for the results. Their responsibility is the price for their
freedom of action. People want to feel free in their actions. Thus they accept to be responsible. It is
a great load off of a manager’s shoulders.
In most modern organizations, a manager cannot actually control what people do most of the time.
The only way to control what is going on is to control the results. And, to understand and accept
that subordinates are free, within an allowed scope, to do whatever they want, as long as their
results are good. Being the boss does not mean controlling what people are doing at any given
moment, as used to be true in age of conveyor belts. Now it means controlling what an
organization (or a part of an organization) is doing in term of results, satisfied customers, costs,
etc. Responsibility to choose specific actions, that was once taken off workers and given to
managers by Taylor, is to be given back to the worker. And so, the archaic notion of ‘humanization’
in the workplace has been rejuvenated, and is again in style.
The main barriers for empowerment and teamwork (which is an essential precondition for
empowerment), relate to a way of thinking cultivated by hundreds of years of the hierarchical
pyramid as the main organizational pattern. Any step in the direction of empowerment is a step
away from the pyramid, although it does not require an immediate change in the bureaucratic
structure - just building in oasis of real teamwork within a hierarchical structure. This may be
possible if divisions are built around processes and products, not functions.
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