You are empowered! Now, show me the magic!
Team autonomy is not as simple as waving a wand.
The idea behind empowerment originated from social scientist Julian Rappaport in 1981. Empowerment emphasizes the degree of autonomy present in people and groups of people. In the 1980s and 1990s, it gained traction as a management trend. The goal was to delegate decision making authority to employees.
But it was not successful in empowering people in the workforce. Management “talked the talk.” They pronounced their people as empowered. Then, they sat back and waited for the magic to happen.
But the magic did not happen.
As it turns out, those accustomed to command-and-control have difficulty with autonomy.
Employees in a traditional management structure get told what to do and how to do it. Rewards result from adherence to the rules, not for venturing outside of them. And these employees bring experiences and biases steeped in the status quo. They have never explored other avenues.
The same is true today as we adopt Agile ways of working. Agile emphasizes self-organizing teams. The revised 2020 Scrum Guide moves beyond self-organizing teams to promote self-managing teams. But unfortunately, we follow the same patterns today as when empowerment was all the rage…
