How Flexibility Can Disempower Staff

Is your organization’s seeming flexibility disempowering staff?

Many organizations I work with that pride themselves on their informality and lack of red tape are unwittingly perpetuating lack of transparency and creating environments with less opportunity for engagement.

Why is that? Because someone, somewhere is still making the decisions – allocating resources, reinforcing or not reinforcing decisions made elsewhere in the organization. The informality often just masks these processes – leading to decision making that staff don’t understand, let alone know how to influence.

With clear processes and systems staff know how to engage and there is greater accountability, which can also reduce bias in who gets the yes within the organization. 

So consider --

• Are you collectively developing and articulating your organizational decision-making process?

• Do staff know who makes what decisions and the criteria they will apply? ·

• Do those not in the topmost leadership have meaningful insertion points to influence decision making that will impact them? 

Just because its not written down doesn’t mean there isn’t a process. Codeveloping it, memorializing it, and sharing it just helps level the playing field.