What happens when you are not empowered to do the job you were hired to do?

I was catching up with a good friend who works in a large tech scale-up. The organisation has been built by happenstance, piling on people after each funding round. Now that they are public, it’s a mess but can’t afford the optics of a complete restructure. So there you have it - a lot of folks with inflated titles trying to prove their worth on the daily. 

My friend had only experienced much smaller companies prior (in the hundreds, not thousands) and was struggling to find his footing. Everyone around him shared openly when he met them 1:1 how much they valued his experience and what it will do to benefit the company, but yet when it came down to it he felt he couldn’t do anything as his manager was; always missing 1:1s, not releasing any of the budgets, and never came back around to give a decision. There was a lot of talking and not a lot of doing. 

On the other side of the coin was his team. Who was so thrilled when he had joined, as they believed he would finally “get it” and move things forward for them, but alas, he was not that white knight, but just another person, trying to do a good job, in a disorganised company. They now filled his 1:1s with groans and gripes, disempowered to make change happen but paid comfortably enough not to leave.

My friend is not alone. In fact, I’ve been there myself. Eager leaders who believe they can clean up everything by holding on to control then end up disempowering smart, talented, and ambitious folks who report into them. I see it everywhere and not only does it look exhausting, but it’s also ineffective and causes a significant amount of churn, slows growth, and often leads to misaligned teams.

What my friend can do:

Control the controllable

Focus on what’s in his team’s control and move forward with initiatives that don’t require permission. Allow a small amount of space in 1:1s for moaning but help them move past that by asking open-ended questions like “What could we do about improving that situation?”

Better to ask for forgiveness than beg for permission

Ask for a budget amount that doesn’t require approval, and start begging for forgiveness instead of asking for permission. I’d always prefer to be faulted for doing something than faulted for being a wallflower. 

Bring things into perspective

Take a cue from Office Space and care a few degrees less. When we get too wrapped into our work we lose perspective that, for most of us, we aren’t saving lives, you are not this job title, whatever you’re stressed about now probably won’t even matter a year from now. As my high school music teacher always said, “don’t sweat the petty things, and don’t pet the sweaty things”. It’s fair to say our high school band was a very successful team!