2. Limit autonomy to boost autonomy
Empowerment is a buzz word of modern organizations – both virtual and physical. It’s essentially the idea that leaders cascade their power to those lower down the hierarchy, while retaining their accountability for the outcome. Theoretically, this way of working is excellent for both the development of employees, as well as getting tasks off leaders’ desks. But, in order for this form of employee autonomy to lead to the desired outcome, a clear frame must be in place. That is, empowerment without strong alignment, both on direction and on critical ways of working, is a sure path to failure. In order for employees to have freedom, they also need a frame around it.
The need for a clear frame is no different in the physical compared to the virtual world. However, frames need to be even “thicker” when working virtually. As it is near-to-impossible to micromanage in the virtual world, clarity on the task, boundaries, and desired outcomes at the start are more critical in virtual contexts. Otherwise, leaders run the risk of empowering employees to discover that they have gone in a completely different direction than intended. And, in the virtual world, it takes far longer for a leader to realize that his or her team members have steered the change bus far off course or even driven it completely off the road.
One example is the facility management and workplace experience company, ISS, which, with more than 400,000 people on staff across more than 30 countries, is one of the world’s largest private employers. In late 2020, the company launched a new OneISS strategy, with the clear aim of increasing alignment and synergies across the organization. The end goal of the strategy was to turbocharge local empowerment, agility and the entrepreneur spirit, which is the DNA of the company culture. The first steps on that journey were to strengthen alignment across regions and business units so that all were “on the same page” regarding the path forward and new ways of working. As employees were located across the globe, a lot of this aligning had to be done virtually. Essentially, they had to first reduce short-term autonomy in order to increase autonomy in the long-term.