Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within

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The Power of Many

I once worked with an organization that recognized that the lack of external responsiveness was causing it to become less competitive. The members of the top management team could see that the organization was facing a deep-change-or-slow-death dilemma and decided something must be done. Concluding that they needed to empower their workforce, they made empowerment a top priority in their business plan. A year later, they reviewed their situation and found that they could not identify any action that had been taken to empower their people. Frustrated, they asked me to analyze the situation.

I began by interviewing the twelve most senior people in the organization. I asked them to define empowerment and to tell me how people ...