What do good people want at work ?
Money, bonuses, promotions ?
Holidays, work from anywhere, free food ?
No matter what material incentives or benefits we give our people, after some time they become part of the baseline and their expectations. They do no add to the satisfaction at the job and hence the desire to seek more money, perks and incentives remains.
The one thing that is most priceless for good people at work is Autonomy – the ability to craft their own decisions and destiny.
How can we give people more autonomy and empower them to perform at their best ?
- Make a list of all the decisions you make today from small to big at work. This can include budgeting, target setting, doing reviews, hiring, designing a product and so on.
- Now for each decision put next to it the name of the person who is best suited to make the decision. The golden rule here is that the person who is closest to the action should be the one deciding. Eg. Customer related decisions should be made by the sales person who meets the customer regularly
- Go ahead and delegate a decision to the person identified. Formally tell them that from now onwards they will lead and anchor this decision
- To enable good governance, you can also set up a basic guideline. For instance when it comes to hiring you can say “ you have a budget of xxx % of sales for hiring. Within that you are empowered to hire and go ahead” or “ you can spend upto xxx $ to meet any customer requirement without asking anyone”
- The goal here is to progressively delegate authority and decision making to different people and make them accountable for delivering the results in their part of the business
It also means people will make mistakes and their will be problems to solve. As you do that remember not to fall into the trap of central decision making and power controls.
Delegate all your authority. Watch your teams flourish.