The transition from slow teams as victims to nimble teams of empowerment

What is the more salient differences between slow and nimble teams is the fact that slow teams tend to experience a victim of identity. They feel like victims to current circumstances, conditions, strengths, gaps and deficiencies.

What's interesting is that their sense of victimhood occurs precisely to the degree that they lack a shared, compelling sense of the future. Nimble teams have a shared sense of the future that they want to see possible and create together. This keeps them in the space of empowerment and agency rather than victimhood. Slow teams can move from victimhood into empowerment simply by creating and acting upon a shared sense of the future they desired together.

It doesn't matter whether the organization as a whole has an up-to-date or viable strategic plan. It doesn't matter how much certainty the team has relative to its own future. To be empowered is to create the kind of clarity about the future that makes us empowered and proactive in the present.

Can we entrust teams with decisions?

As real time information and experience based knowledge is more distributed and accessible, teams are in the position to make good decisions quickly and well. If there is a nimble culture of trust within the team, the team can be smarter than any single decision maker.

Entrusting teams is possible when they gain clarity in how to make realistic decisions together. It doesn't take long, and is simply giving them decision recipes and practice.

 

 

 

The era of empowerment

I did my first unpublished piece on empowered workplaces 40 years ago. It wasn't until 25 years later that I published in "Appreciative Leadership" the technology of making it possible. The essential definition of technology is the science and applications of practical techniques. 

With the current incredible reality that over 80% of leaders still operate from command and control, we finally have the technologies to make empowerment reality, along with the amazing performance benefits possible. 

Now it's just a matter of leadership growth. We know how to guide leaders in the cultivation of empowered, nimble, flourishing teams and organizations. Exciting times indeed.