My boss carefully explained to me the rules of working in his team. His boss gave him a certain amount of power in the company. Power to make decisions, spend money, create new things and hire & fire people. His rationale was that in an objectives based organisation he had been given the power to fulfil his objectives – no more and no less.
Part of his job was to decide how much power to give to the members of his team and how much to keep for himself – imagine a cake, giving out slices of it and keeping some for yourself. It was a delicate balance - giving too much power away undermined his own management authority, but keeping too much of it was demotivating for his team.
His rule of thumb was to keep half the power and divvy out the other half. I’m not sure how he measured it, but he was very open that that was what he was doing.
This guy was a nightmare to work for. Any idea was evaluated less on the quality of the idea itself, and more on the impact it had on the power balance, and particularly on any resulting power loss that he might suffer. As a consequence good ideas were routinely quashed. Bad ideas that didn't upset the power balance often made the cut. In our team we called ourselves the mushroom farm – we were kept in the dark and had shit thrown at us.
This is people management at its worst, but it’s not uncommon. The higher up an organisation you go the more power you may have. And you can hold onto it by keeping key information to yourself, rejecting (even stealing) ideas, not listening to the team, taking all the credit or keeping your office door shut.
If you work for someone like this, know that you're going to get held back in your career and, if you're looking to advance, get out as fast as possible.
Power isn’t finite. Imagine a cake that gets bigger and bigger because each member of the team is growing their slice; their ideas and creativity, influence and results. Power becomes infinite – and that’s what organisations need in order to grow.
If you're the boss, encourage everyone in your team to increase their creativity and influence within the business. Your 'power' is the sum of theirs and will continue to get bigger as you get better at what you do.
When you’re hiring people go for the best you can find and afford; go for people who are better than you – it doesn’t delegitimise your position in the company, it reinforces it. Give those people freedom, support and the air cover to be creative. Make your expectations (and the reward system) crystal clear and then stand back and watch them shoot for the moon.
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