INTRODUCTION

The difference between success and failure of a company is very often be traced to the question of how well the organization brings out the great energies and talents of its people, the most important asset of the company. Peoples involvement is one of the business necessities for its success. A Japanese worker produces, on average, twenty seven improvement ideas a year which is the highest in the world because they are empowered and given freedom to exploit their talents. Increasing competition, an acceleration in the pace of change, increasing customers needs and limited resources are demanding efficiency, creativity and responsiveness. A collective and shared learning of quality related values is important as the organization develops its capacity to survive in the external environment and manage its own internal affairs.

In Indian companies particularly public sector companies the motivation and the search for achievement and fulfillment is often not visible at the work place and listlessness and resigned indifference reigns. This feature of the company life raises an obvious question: can we find a way of winning more employee involvement at work place so as to generate the enthusiasm and commitment. If this happens, they gain self-fulfillment and at the same time release their full potential to address the external threats and opportunities that the organization faces. This is the challenge of empowerment.

The only way to get people to effect continuous improvement in products and services as way of life in doing daily their work is by empowering people. Empowerment has major implications for the way the organization is managed. It is human nature to feel that they *can make a difference to the success of the enterprise in which they work, and feel that their participation and skills are valued. Employees in the organization want to be able to make decisions, to devise solutions to work place problems, to exercise their initiative, and to be held accountable for results. Empowerment is the mix of practices and behaviours that support and encourge employees throughout the organization in realising these ambitions. Empowerment comes ultimately from changing the role and behaviour of managment.

In a command and control regime employees concentrate on doing what they are told and on keeping their managers happy. Acting in the customer's best interest, making improvement or producing high quality work: may be sacrificed in pursuit of doing what the manager directs. When the direction is unclear people guess what their manager wants rather than use their own judgement, or are paralyzed for fear of the consequences of making a mistake. They lack the confidence to act independently, to be creative or to take decisions without recourse to their manager.

In an empowered environment, managers have trust that their peoples' motivation is no different from their own. Under such circumstances their people commit themselves to greater ownership of the work that they do, and feel able to exercise initiative without fear of recrimination.

Fundamental to empowerment is the understanding that it is front-line people who are in control of customer perceptions, not managers. People at the front-line are closer to what now, closer to their problems and concerns, and to changing patterns of demand in the marketplace. Empowerment means giving responsibility to those closest to the problem, in order to harness their creativity and commitment to ever-improving standards or customer service, efficiency and effectiveness.

AN EMPOWERED ORGANISATION

An empowered organisation sees an opportunity at every point of contact with customer to satisfy their requirement and to delight them. An empowered organization repose confidence in their employees to enable them to put their heart in the work. Empowerment concepts on involvement, enthusiasm, responsibility and self-fulfilment stir the heart people. An empowered organization is characterized by:

i) a strong sense of direction and purpose, shared by all employees;

ii) well-understood values and beliefs, explicit or implicit, that form the basis for management behaviour;

iii) a focus on customers, processes and improvement techniques, so that employees can focus on adding value and pleasing customers;

iv) proactive approach, learning, problem-solving and innovation at all levels;

v) a high degree of trust in each other, in management, and in other functions;

vi) highly motivated work force, possessing a great sense of self-worth and achievement;

vii) managers who listen, encourage, develop and help their people.

The difference between delight and disappointment can be very fine. A woman rang a department store to ask the weight of a parcel requiring collection, because she was pregnant. The person dealing with the query immediately offered to have the parcel delivered, resulting in a delighted customer. Most delighted experiences happen because an employee understands the customer's problem, and is empowered to act in the customer's best interests, secure in the knowledge that he/she has the support of the whole organization and, secure in their own capability to make the right decision.

EMPOWERMENT AND CONTINUAL QUALITY IMPROVEMENT

It is difficult to achieve the loftier goals that globalization demands unless the employees at each level bottom to top perceived continuous improvement as a benefit and become committed to the goals that produce it. Continuous improvement is a means harnessing the talents of everyone in an organization in a ceaseless quest for ever-improving standards. It relies on employee participation: the greater the participation, the more ideas are generated, the more enthusiasm is created, the greater the rewards to the business. A survey comparing the results of Japanese and American suggestion schemes showed the following results.

Source: Joint NASS/JHRA survey

EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT OF PROCESSES

A process is a systematic series of events which uses resources to transform inputs and add value to create outputs to achieve specific goals. They create a change of state by taking inputs such as material, information, people and pass these through a sequence of stages during which the inputs are transformed into an output with different characteristics. Hence processes act upon inputs and are dormant until the input is received.

The key business processes that deliver value to the external customer are horizontal. They require horizontal links with coordinated involvement of people of several functions, in order to provide high quality, responsive service that delights customers. Conventional organization structures where responsibility starts and ends at each functional boundary, lines of reporting are mostly vertical and communications across the organization tend to distort before reaching the destination are often inappropriate in a business climate that demands creativity, flexibility and responsiveness.

The processes do not normally recognize functional boundaries but are often influenced by them. Each process has an objective with both quantitative and qualitative measures of its outputs directly related to its objectives. The transformation stages are designed to ensure the combination of resources achieves the objectives - the desired outputs that satisfies the customers. In an empowered organization, work is structured around groups of people, often in self-directed work teams, which drive and operate the key business processes that deliver value to the customer. Learning and innovation are continuous and normal. Teams are held together by shared objectives and by common values. They work co-operatively and harmoniously to deliver high quality customer service at lowest cost.

WHY EMPOWERMENT EFFORTS FAIL ?

A threat to values

The main impediment to empowerment lies in the fact that it requires people to change not only the way they behave, but also their underlying values. Managers do not conceive that staff could have valid ideas for improvement and such ideas imply criticism of them and undermine their authority and their very identity in the organization gets threatened. Therefore encouraging staff to take time from their desks to develop improvement ideas challenges managers' fundamentally-help beliefs and attitude The consequence is that managers stifle the initiative by preventing their staff from participating, claiming that time could not be spared because of workloads.

Fear of recrimination.

Empowered employees take the initiative to make improvements and deliver good service, rather than leaving it to someone else. This involves risks that they make poor judgements or that they do things that others think are their responsibility. In an environment where people are fearful of the consequences or the disapproval of others, risk-taking will not happen and empowerment cannot occur.

A small branch of courier service company wanted a microwave so that they could have hot food during the Winter. The company had recently announced an empowerment drive and the branch manager, with a surge of enthusiasm, thought this an ideal opportunity to demonstrate the new approach by telling staff to get a model that suited their requirements. They were delighted and morale jumped high. When proposal reached the Regional Manager he felt offended as he was not consulted and central purchase scuttled the proposal. Empowerment at the branch stopped .

Fear, in any form undermines the commitment, motivation and confidence of employees in work. This is the reason why people will not raise issues despite glaring effects on customer service, waste or product quality. It results in middle managers keeping a lid on problems so that senior managers only get to hear the news they want to hear. Fear means that people hide problems to avoid recrimination. But fear is like an undercurrent, sapping motivation and creating unnecessary diversions. Fear generates distrust, divisiveness and defensive behaviour and builds a passive and conforming workforce. In contrast, an empowered workforce is active, enthusiastic and involved. It has its own views of what needs to be done - and is always willing to express them.

Organizational culture

The cultural values of an organization play an important role in empowerment of employees.The culture reflects the reasons how people get promoted, the way recognition is given for good work, the criteria by which one individual's rewards are set higher than another's. Promotion criteria, for example, may favour managers who get short term results, rather than those who focus on achieving the organization's vision. Result-oriented mangers often advance up the hierarchy in a flurry of rhetoric and apparent activity, but leave a legacy of mounting problems to those unfortunate enough to follow in their wake. Objectives are set on arbitrary targets chosen by the merit that they are easy to quantify. They may ignore what it is possible for a process to deliver, and force managers into defensive behaviour.

In a financial services organization in Delhi, employees were set a target of turning round new applications for enhancing business within 48 hours. The target was keenly followed by senior management. But, at peak times, the process could not ensure that a full quality check was done. Employees therefore compromised quality in order to meet the target, but at the expense of customer service. This decision was conscious and deliberate, and staff were demotivated by producing poor quality work. Employees treated with cynicism whatever management said about the importance of quality.

Arbitrary performance targets compromise quality, destroy teamwork and co-operation between functions because managers focus on the results required, often at the expense of customer needs, teamwork or even plain common sense. This reduces communication and participation, not allowing teams and groups to work together towards the common objectives of the organization. Critical to empowerment is the design of management systems that align individual aspirations with those of the organization.

Organization structures

The structure of an organization has an important role in quality development. This itself can be an impediment that may reinforce disempowerment. Control structures are characterized by strong functional boundaries, rigid hierarchies and job specifications that demarcate authority and responsibility. Implicit in a control structure is the assumption that the role of management is to tell people what to do, and then make sure that they do it.

Employees who work in such a structure fall into the habit of checking with those above that their intended decisions and actions are acceptable. Managers link their role and status to the authority levels and responsibilities vested in their post, enforcing rigidity that it is difficult for the concept of empowerment to challenge. Some managers distrust the motivation of employees. They believe that if their people are allowed freedom to exercise initiative, they will not act responsibly or in the best interests of the business.

Lack of Management commitment

It is believed that Empowerment will open pandora's box:.The conflicts, problems and issues that were suppressed by management's style and structures will become visible. Life for managers becomes much more complex. Their patience and tolerance are tested; they are tempted to slam down the lid.

Lack of time and resources

It requires resources to breaking down the barriers. It takes time to win peoples' involvement and commitment.They need time to discuss and debate how the concepts apply to them. It requires dialogue with colleagues and managers and time to consider the issues. If your organization is not prepared to commit this time, don't start: you will merely frustrate.

VISION FOR EMPOWERMENT

The intent of the organization must be clear. A high degree of clarity of thinking, a sense of direction, and a commitment to action, followed by an active role in making the changes happen is necessary. Inspiration and appeal are pre-requisites in winning commitment and cooperation.

Change is impossible if the need for change is not understood. Without a vision of better future, there is no incentive for change. The challenge to leadership is to define what the vision is, how the organization is going to get there, and provide visible example of the behaviours expected. If this does not happen employees will quickly become eynical and disbelieving

The vision serves as dstination, a target to aim at, but without commitment, it is mere rhetoric, simply good intentions and fine ideals. The process of sharing the vision is designed to create clarity of management thinking, a sense of direction, and a commitment to action.

A transformation occurs when empowerment process starts. It may have been a long time ago that managers wielded their authority to suppress staff from action on their own initiative.It may now be an accepted and unchallenged cultural feature that staff work passively and uninterestedly.

The centre of empowerment is with management. Management must make the first moves: to provide directional; to begin behaving in new ways; to give responsibilities to those below them; to train and support those below them so that they feel confident in accepting the new responsibility offered to them. In short, empowerment has to flow down the organization from the top.

Empowering manager to empower employees

Empowerment is built on credible, trusted management and both are easily undermined by hypocrisy, cynicism or self-serving behaviour. People believe what the organization is saying when they see management behaviour that supports the words. Words without consistent deeds are merely management rhetoric.

The new role of managers represents a distinct combination of facilitative and creative skills that many managers have never had the opportunity to develop, and that the organization has, in the past, not valued highly (See Box 1). The challenge is often greatest for middle managers. In some organizations they find themselves sandwiched between top management's desire for change and a workforce fearful and reluctance to change.

The Change to the new ways may be easily accommodated. Those willing to change should be encouraged to acknowledge their difficulty. A survey of a normal population has revealed that first 15 percent are prochangers, next 35 percent need a bit of counselling, next 35 percent need persuation to change and last 15 percent are the difficult lot to change. With support, encouragement and education, most will eventually be successful in effecting change. The managers who find it impossible to change have no place in the organization.

CONCLUSIONS

Empowerment meets a very basic human need - a sense of personal potential, the belief that one can make a difference to company performance. This potential provides inner confidence in one's capability to make decisions to make reasonable demands of others and to have influence over what happens around you. Inner confidence is the stuff that draws out inspiring performances from people when the occasion demands.There is no easy route to empowerment. A company that tries to pick and choose the bits it feels most comfortable with, or tries a shortcut, will probably fail.

Key to success is a compelling, distinctive and memorable vision. Without this, the destination is not clear and cannot be communicated. Seconly management behaviour must accord with the vision, otherwise employees will quickly spot the hypocrisy, and cynicism will set in. The commitment needs to be sustained, particularly when the going gets tough and shourt term pressures may tes management's constancy of purpose to the limit. Finally, there must be an action plan to chart the direction, set goals and establish measures jof success, otherwise you won't know how you are doing.

Some leaders will find the challenge of empowerment impossible to reconcile with their strongly-held beliefs in management as a control mechanism. But empowerment represents a revolution in working relationships between people. The extent to which their individual and collective talents can be liberated, harnessed and focused in a common direction represents a great opportunity, one that is worth striving for .