These Conditions of Empowerment must be codified into a written document with each employee. Each and every team member brings a different skill set and is asked to participate at differing stages of the effort. There need not be any short cuts. The time spent up-front documenting expectations, standards, resources, accountability and consequences can only serve to minimize what in the past have been some of our biggest communications difficulties in our relationship with the facilities organization. Up until now, we have discussed empowerment and its requisite conditions as they apply to individuals.
Individuals work in organizations.
Indeed, the focus of this discussion is the outlining and improvement of what is essentially an organizational process. Similarly, much of the miscommunication between the facilities management organization and the materiels management organization is attributable to differences in organizational culture. One way to ease these differences, bridge the gap and avoid problematic relationships is to seek to develop mutual agreement between the organizations. A methodology for achieving this is the concept of the Win-Win agreement applied to the organizations themselves. Each member contributing to and accepting the final result can only lead to a more productive and fruitful understanding.