3 Ways to Empower Your Everyday Decision-Makers

The headlines dominating the tumultuous times we are navigating have one thing in common: as the pace of change quickens, more complex business challenges arise.

Despite the uncertain climate, we as leaders are continuously striving for the same thing: to wow our customers, to enable our employees to do their best work, to deliver for shareholders. If you manage people and control resources, you are in the decision-making business. And there are constantly new decisions that need to be made, fast. There are no easy answers and curling up in a ball is not an option.

Command and control organizations are outdated. The vast majority of decisions driving businesses today occur outside of the C-suite. Individual contributors in each department are at the helm of making critical business decisions. From a marketer refining an ad campaign based on performance, to a customer support specialist reviewing customer feedback data and surfacing a common pain point to solve, to an engineer being alerted to a user-reported bug –these are not C-suite problems, but they are what keep an organization running.

Here are three tactics to empower your vital everyday decision-makers with the autonomy to work where they perform best, with the human sentiment data they need to be successful.

I read in a newsletter that although President Biden declared the pandemic “over” on a recent “60 Minutes,” when it comes to the future of work, we still have a big problem with COVID-19. I couldn’t agree more. Pre-pandemic normalcy in society has forever changed. The international shutdowns kickstarted a technology-enabled way of working we have all personally navigated these last few years.

My advice as we continue to forge a new path here? Build functional and flexible autonomy into the fabric of your workplace. Our most valuable employees demand the autonomy to do their jobs when, where, and how they see fit. The truly forward-thinking leaders will trust their employees and honor this wish.

When employees are empowered with autonomous decision making, performance skyrockets. Purposefully empower your everyday champion decision-makers with choice, and they will continue to show up with their best foot forward.

We can agree the best-run businesses are data-driven. Collecting operational data is crucial to any company, but only focusing on activity metrics will leave a business flat-footed. The not so obvious side of this coin is collecting human sentiment. While data is supreme, sentiment — how employees, customers, and future customersfeel –is the missing piece of the puzzle.