Why is it so hard to devolve decision making?
So many of the senior leadership teams I have worked with over the years believe that they lack the capability to push decision making down to what I would call the appropriate level. They are reluctant to let go. When we dig down and find out what the truth is, we often find that the ‘next level’ is actually very capable - and often frustrated by the lack of ‘empowerment’.
Our job as consultants is firstly to enable the senior team
to develop more confidence in their team members. At Cirrus, we begin by by helping them to show their worth
through action on projects. Secondly, we
need to encourage the senior team to coach the next level to assume more
authority to act, to take risks and not to be punished, to step up into the gap
between them and the senior execs. We can’t just do this as consultants - it has to
come from the senior leaders themselves, if it is to be believable. Thirdly, we ask the senior team to identify the
decisions only they can make. This is
typically a small subset of the actual decisions they make as a board, and
demonstrates to them the decisions they can push to their direct reports in
order to increase the agility and customer centricity of the organisation. When we get movement by the exec team on not
taking decisions, then we are really beginning to make progress.