How To Overcome Electric Fence Syndrome At Your Company

Here are a few ideas

U.S. business culture celebrates agile, fast-moving companies for a good reason: they work. Employees who can make decisions, run experiments, and take action without completing a puzzle of permissions are happier and more effective. 
 

However, most companies haven’t figured out how to distribute power from executives and managers to front-line employees. In fact, some of the qualities we HR people seek in employees—independent thinking, initiative, and responsibility—are qualities that management techniques often undermine. 

A company with good intentions can, inadvertently, abandon employees to fear. Employees are told to take initiative but get reprimanded for overstepping. They compensate by asking for permission and then get punished for not calling the shots. It’s like working inside an electric fence. You have no idea how far you can move before it shocks you.

The problem is that these cultures lack a framework for decision-making. At Widen, we spent years developing a culture of autonomy, but we, too, realized that the parameters were undefined. We left employees guessing about how much decision-making power they had. So, we developed a framework called Power to the Edge. I’ll share this framework and the considerations that went into it. My hope is that you can use these ideas to counter electric fence syndrome at your organization. 

1.    Risk Tolerance

Decision-making autonomy at your organization is going to depend on your tolerance for risk. At Widen, a marketing technology company, we call for 80 percent of the decision to be made by employees rather than our executives or owners. We can do that because we’re not in a highly regulated industry. We prize customer service above all else, so we want employees to feel like they can take good care of customers without ever saying, “Let me check with my manager.”  

2. Classifying Decisions

When should a decision belong to an executive, manager, or everyone? I believe this is the most critical aspect of a decision-making framework, and it must be straightforward. There cannot be dozens of “if…then…” scenarios for employees to remember. Very simply, Widen classifies decisions with three letters:

•  A decisions belong to executives because they involve changes to the brand, strategy, and ideology that would affect the whole company.
•   B decisions belong to managers and team leads because they affect the product, multiple customer relationships, or team dynamics.
•    C decisions belong to everyone in the company and are meant to serve the best interest of customers and reflect the best applications of one’s talent.

Widen employees can distinguish between A, B, and C with a simple question: Will this affect the company, my team, or just me and my direct customer contacts?

3. Documenting Decisions

Some companies need decisions documented for legal, compliance, and risk management reasons. That is not the case at Widen. We document Power to the Edge decisions so that new employees have a library of examples to study. The documentation form is a Google Doc with a series of questions to answer. It challenges employees to think about four aspects of their decision. Summed up briefly, they are:

•    Awareness: What is the situation and its impact? What decision needs to be made?
•    Collaboration: Who should participate in this decision? Who will be affected by it?
•    Ownership: What metrics or controls ensure that the decision aligns with our values? 
•    Responsiveness: What is the final decision and when should it be made?

If Widen employees answer and study these questions, Power to the Edge will become second nature.

4. Unlearning Behavior

If your leadership team introduces a decision-making framework, it owns the outcome. Employees may use their newfound powers in unexpected ways, both good and bad. 

Expect the culture to feel pressure and uncertainty at first. Expect some mistakes and miscommunications. Plan to coach employees and edit the framework. 

Recognize that a decision-making framework isn’t merely an HR policy. You’re calling for an entirely new way of working. You’re ridding your organization of an electric fence that conditioned your employees to learn behaviors that must be unlearned.

Author Bio

Heather Kleist is HR Manager at Widen Enterprises. Follow @HeatherKleist Visit www.widen.com