One great pleasure I enjoy in my profession is mentoring.
I was a research guide and mentor for a few years at a local university. Under my direction, a small team of 3 – 5 senior/graduate level students would complete a project, write a technical paper and a poster summarizing their work, and present them at an R&D Expo on campus. All this must be done within an eight-week span during summer! A highly ambitious program indeed!
On the first day of the project, I explain to the team the purpose of the project and the expected results. We develop a project road map together. Thereafter I get out of their way. I’m only a mentor and coach. The team has complete freedom to make their own decisions, solve problems, and come up with the final deliverables. They’re totally empowered!
Every team—five in all in as many years—completed its project successfully and received an A grade. Two teams even produced papers of such high quality we ended up presenting them at prestigious global conferences.
Whether it’s a small student team working on a summer research project or a gargantuan team involved in a major organizational transformation, the principles behind team success are the same. Which brings us to organizational transformation success secret Number 3—EMPOWERMENT.
Power of Empowerment
One of my recent student team projects was to develop a software application. It was basically all about writing code. When the students heard about it in our first meeting, they were shocked and worried. None of them had ever written code. I told them I hadn’t either and so couldn’t be of much help. I also told them I had the utmost confidence they could finish the project successfully just like the teams from previous years. I challenged them while inspiring them at the same time.
Within a week after the first meeting, they came back with the first module of the application. They far exceeded my expectations. I asked them how they did it. Apparently, they watched 110 YouTube videos in two days to get started. Wow! I almost fell out of my chair when they told me about it.
After they’d completed the project with flying colors, I asked them what their biggest lesson learned was. One of them said, “Now I have the confidence that I can learn and do anything under the sun!” That young lady was ready to conquer the world! That’s the power of empowerment!
What’s behind empowerment? The key principles are well known—but not well practiced: aligned purpose, team autonomy, strong communication, reward and recognition, learning from mistakes, and so on. These principles are successfully embraced by forward-looking companies including Patagonia, Salesforce, and Spotify.
Put people first
Remember? It’s the people, stupid! (See my previous blog.)
As they launch new bold initiatives, either proactively or reacting to a crisis, inept leaders pay more attention to profits, products, and processes—and even themselves—than people. But great leaders make people their number one priority.
Marissa Mayer was brought in as CEO in 2012 to save original internet darling Yahoo from the brink of collapse. Early in her tenure, Mayer made one of her objectives clear. It was to improve productivity by “streamlining processes, reducing bureaucracy, and removing jams.” Aiming to increase productivity, she banned telecommuting. It backfired on her. It made employees angry and unhappy. And she became a media sensation—not exactly the kind of PR a new CEO wants.
Mayer talked more and listened less. Pontificated frequently and ignored employee input. She focused on herself and her brand image rather than the people she was leading. Her emotional intelligence was generally acknowledged as poor. Her inept leadership led to declining growth, internal dissent, poor employee morale, etc. She resigned from her five-year stint at the top job as soon as Verizon bought Yahoo.
To juxtapose, let’s look at Mary Barra, CEO of the automotive giant, General Motors—a stark contrast in leadership. Barra took the helm during the deadliest “faulty ignition switch” recall in the automobile industry. She had to navigate the bruised company through the labyrinth of attacks by customers, media, and the government. Crisis management on steroids! With her superior emotional intelligence, empathy, relationship building prowess—not to mention grace and poise—she skillfully led GM out of its worst debacle ever.
Responding to a question in an interview about how she climbed up the GM corporate ladder after starting as an intern at the age of 18, Barra said, “it’s all about people.” No wonder Barra is transforming GM and receiving kudos from Wall Street as well as Main Street.
Create autonomous agile teams
Frustrated by persistent cost overruns and schedule slippages of software development projects, 17 founding fathers created the ‘Agile Manifesto’ in 2001. Its 12 principles paved a path towards a new approach for organizations to become more nimble, flexible, and adaptive to change. Agile methods are not just limited to the software industry anymore. They have become part and parcel of the ‘way of working’ in today’s businesses.
One Manifesto principle shines the spotlight on self-organizing autonomous teams. These teams are self-driven and empowered. Team members make decisions on their own. They are self-aware and trust each other. Communications are strong, open, and honest.
Federal Express, 3M, AT&T, Netflix, and Zappos are well known for their autonomous teams. Autonomous agile teams are key to bringing organizational change faster, better, and smarter.
Ask for input—and listen, listen, and listen
Leadership is not built on one-way communication where the boss talks and everybody else listens. My personal observation is that the higher the leader goes up the organizational ladder, the more they talk and the less they listen. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
Dan Price, founder/CEO of Gravity Payments, a medium-sized credit card processing company in Seattle, asked an employee during a break why he seemed to be in a bad mood. He complained that Gravity was “ripping me off.” He lamented that his annual salary of $35,000 was not enough for his needs and he deserved better.
After a few days of agonizing and soul searching, Price made $70,000 the minimum wage for every one of his 120 employees taking a huge pay cut for himself. Contrary to what his critics predicted, the company didn’t go bankrupt but in fact thrived.
Late spring 2020, Gravity, as every other business, was hit by COVID. They lost many clients and revenue plummeted. The future looked grim. While many businesses succumbed to layoffs, Price used a different strategy. He sought input from his staff for their ideas.
They said they’d be willing to stay for a small pay cut. Instead of cutting everybody’s pay by a certain percentage, Price asked each to tell him privately how much they’re willing to sacrifice. And 98% of his employees agreed with this approach and stayed. As COVID slowed down and revenue climbed, not only did Price raise his staff salaries back to their previous levels but even paid back the cuts they had endured.
Vishal Garg, CEO of Better.com, an online mortgage lender, is a different kind of example. He made headlines and created a media tsunami when he fired 900 employees—almost 10% of his workforce—right before Christmas 2021 on a Zoom call. (Better.com’s board suspended Garg for a few weeks, and he is now back on the job after having gone through ‘rehabilitation.’)
Between Price and Garg, who would you want to work for? Who do you think can create a super motivated, most loyal, and high performing team? Who can lead organizational transformation better?
Give feedback and rewards
Empowered teams become stronger when they receive feedback and positive reinforcement. Timely feedback is critical to learning faster from mistakes, higher levels of motivation, and greater performance. Feedback must focus on the positive and future. What did they do right? And moving forward how can they do better?
Cargill, a food producer and distributor founded more than 150 years ago, realized in 2010 that they needed to transform the company to “become more agile, reduce complexity, and simplify processes.” Responding to these business initiatives, they installed an award-winning “Everyday Performance Management System.”
The new system shifted focus from dreadful annual performance reviews to forward-facing feedback on a regular basis. It built trust and created stronger relationships between managers and team members. The results were exceptional. Employee engagement surged and team performance soared.
Feedback coupled with rewards/recognition is a surefire way to enhance motivation and build loyal teams.
Blackstone, a private equity firm, last fall acquired a majority stake in Spanx, a fast-growing woman’s shapewear company. A major investment indeed for the start-up! The founder of the company, Sara Blakely, pronounced that she was buying each one of her employees—probably some 700 of them—two first class plane tickets to travel anywhere in the world along with $10,000 in cash to spend on their trip. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to work for life for Blakely.
Treat mistakes as mileposts on the road to success
No team or organization can become successful without making mistakes or facing failures. No war is won without losing a battle or two. How you treat errors, mistakes, and failures says a lot about your organizational culture and your team performance.
When you punish mistakes, teams don’t want to take chances by trying new ideas. They avoid experimentation fearing failure. Then how do you expect to become innovative to compete in the market? Giving new ideas a chance, experimentation, learning by trial and error are the bedrock of innovation.
Make mistakes mileposts for reaching success. Learn from them and improve constantly. Of course, intentional mistakes should not be tolerated, and fatal errors (for example, related to safety) must be avoided at all costs.
Amazon’s founder and former CEO claims that his company’s growth is built on failures. “If you’re going to take bold bets, they’re going to be experiments, which by their very nature are prone to failure. But a few big successes compensate for the dozens of things that didn’t work.”
Angela E.G Sam says
Well-written piece, Dr. Prasad! I totally resonate with this and have learned a great deal from this article.
Thanks for writing this.