BUS603: Managing People

Any role in any organization involves these three types of work occurring at various moments and in various situations. No job requires just one.

The labels "managed," enabled," and "empowered" apply to different work at different times, and all three are embedded in work activity at different times and in different tasks. That means leaders should be paying more attention to the work contributors are doing: the kind of work, its purpose, and its desired outcomes. We're now in a position to consider how innovation factors into this equation.

Frequently, people discuss the different modes of work by way of contrast. Most language about them connotes negativity: managed work is "the worst," while empowered work is "the best". The goal of any leadership practice should be to "move people along the scale" - to create empowered contributors.

However, just as types of work are located on a continuum that doesn't include this element of negation, so too should our understanding of the types of work. Rather than seeing work as, for example "always empowered" or "always managed," we should recognize that any role is a function of all three types of work at the same time, each to a varying degree. Think of the equation this way:

Note here that the more enabled and empowered the work is, the more potential there is for creativity when doing that work. This is because creativity (and the creative individual) requires information - consistently updated and "fresh" sources of information - used in conjunction with individual judgment and capacity for interpreting how to use and combine that information to define problems, ideate, and solve problems. Enabled and empowered work can increase inclusivity - that is, draw more closely on an individual's unique skills, perspectives, and talents because, by definition, those kinds of work are less managed and more guided. Open leadership clearly supports hiring for diversity exactly for the reason that it makes inclusivity so much richer. The ambiguity that's characteristic of the challenges we face in modern workplaces means that the work we do is ripe with potential for innovation - if we embrace risk and adapt our leadership styles to liberate it.

In other words:

Focusing on the importance of enabled work and empowered work is not to devalue managed work in any way. I would say that managed work creates a stable foundation on which creative (enabled and empowered) work can blossom. Imagine if all the work we did was empowered; our organizations would be completely chaotic, undefined, and ambiguous. Organizations need a degree of managed work in order to ensure some direction, some understanding of priorities, and some definition of "quality".

Any role in any organization involves these three types of work occurring at various moments and in various situations. No job requires just one. As open leaders, we must recognize that work isn't an all-or-nothing, one-type-of-work-alone equation. We have to get better at understanding work in these three different ways and using each one to the organization's advantage, depending on the situation.