| Empower People
- Panacea or Disaster? |
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The second teaching of TQM that has had occasional disastrous effects for
some companies is the concept of empowering people. |
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You will notice that QPI Principle Number Seven does state that we should
empower people. But, only in the context of a global management system
paradigm. Otherwise empowering people may have negative effects for various
reasons. |
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One reason is that empowering people sometimes is nothing more than idle
talk and the formation of a lot of meaningless meetings, teams, or "circles"
that have no real mission or structure. Once people realize that all of
the talk about empowering people does not really change anything, they
may become disillusioned and that tends to have a detrimental effect on
the organization. |
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More insidious, the second thing that can be very dangerous is that if
people are not embedded in a full management system, such as the QPI System,
they will often tend to do things that have long-term global negative effects
when they are empowered. In other words, empowering people in the absence
of a comprehensive management structure can have extremely negative effects
on an organization. |
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Many TQM systems or teachings have simply emphasized the empowerment of
people and the continual improvement of processes in the absence of a total
management structure. In some cases this has led to disastrous results. |
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Our advice to companies that want to adopt the QPI System is to not
start with empowering people, but rather begin with the other Six QPI
Principles. After appropriate decision making structures and processes
are in place and a mentality for focusing on process, the cessation of
"tampering", adoption of a global viewpoint, then the process of empowering
people in the context of this total managerial structure can follow. |
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