A business requires a lot of decisions. Some small, some big.
Every decision takes some time and energy. In order to provide fast service to our customers, we must ensure that the decisions affecting customers are made fast. Faster the decision, faster the execution, better the service.
We know that giving clear responsibilities to our employees is a good management practice. But, along with the responsibility, we must also give them the authority to execute so that they can fulfill their responsibility well. Companies known for providing excellent customer service achieve the efficiency in decision making by giving authority along with responsibility, by empowering their people rightly.
I once talked to the GM of a very famous hotel in Kovalam known for its excellent customer service. They have 180 employees catering to the guests in their 60 rooms. The guests can approach any of the employees for their usual requests and the same employee would assure the guests instantly that the job will be done. Then they just inform the respective department and the task gets done. The employees don’t have to ask anybody for permission.
Here is what the GM had to say: “Our guests don’t know what is our organizational hierarchy and they don’t need to. Their requests must be attended to. Promptly. We analyzed the usual guest requests and realized that 90% of the requests are common in nature, they should not need any approval and can be processed faster. They must be attended to immediately without any bureaucratic delay. We have trained our employees to identify the type of the request quickly and act accordingly. Everybody is empowered to take the decision as per that discretion.”
For every decision, if our people have to depend upon their seniors, it may cripple the speed of the organization. The organization will not be able to respond faster. Also, it may cause the decision fatigue in the seniors because everyone has a finite amount of energy available to be able to concentrate fully on a matter to take an informed decision. If the energy is spent on small decisions, which have very limited overall business impact, the managers will not have much energy left for more important decisions. Empowerment of employees can speed up the organizational responsiveness and also conserve the energy of senior managers for the complex, more demanding decisions.
Also, an empowered employee works with a sense of ownership, freedom and power. Power produces great results when distributed judiciously.
