Empower staff to be flexible

Today's workplace needs enlightened leadership to build flexible organisations; agile, responsive and competitive in a rapidly changing global economy. Never has business been such a competitive endeavour.

The challenges we are experiencing today are tame compared to what is projected to occur going forward. Staying competitive isn't just about hiring and developing the very best people; it's about building a workplace that allows for these talented individuals to create a sustainable organisation that has the capacity to learn and to stay a step ahead.

The roadsides of business will be littered with the shells of organisations that once enjoyed success but then couldn't change. Often the failure will have occurred because in the process of building success the organisations broke their people and their spirit. Sadly, this also creates a disintegration of the workplace community.

What is the problem? Competitive organisations depend upon people for everything but short-term successes. Market forces and monopolistic positions can generate success for a quarter or even a year, but a healthy workplace is needed for long-term growth.

Easier said than done. The challenge is in thinking beyond the current pressures and building the effective workplace as a community in which empowerment occurs naturally. All of this carries with it an obligation to re-create the meaning of work and to base that re-creation on the wisdom developed from the knowledge and experimentation among some of the world's most successful organisations.

Today, it is essential to transform the workplace. This will involve a departure from previous assumptions. Being creative and taking risks produces the learning needed to help drive the change process. Being competitive requires the engagement of the workforce. If an organisation has to hire and pay management to instruct workers, the game will be lost as cost alone would prohibit competition with companies in low-cost countries. Efficiencies must be found everywhere; managerial overhead costs that do not add value to the product or service must be reduced.

Flexibility

Companies that become great have a culture that promotes flexibility. Fad programmes are ineffectual: empowerment comes from employees who are able to pursue organisational goals that they're aligned with. In doing this they develop their own work spirit and create a community of others who believe in what everyone, together, is doing.

Flexibility comes from people free to do right, with an agreed value base to help guide them. Real settings where this has been created can be found around the world. Flexibility in the workplace occurs through thoughtful design, an empowered workforce that cares about its work.

The principles in empowerment cases seem to be the same: there must be sincere respect for the people who work for a company, and management must request that people offer their voices as well as their work. To create such a flexible workplace is possible; and when it is working well the stressfulness of each job is balanced by a shared desire on everyone's part to provide a performance level that guarantees the success of the company overall.

Sanjiv Anand is the Managing Director and Rajesh Iyer is Director at Cedar Management Consulting International.