Tim: That’s such a great example. For
people to be empowered, it’s about making better decisions and to make better
decisions you can’t just give people a list
of rules to follow; you have to give them
guidelines that help shape their decisions.
Dave: That’s exactly right. It’s about shaping
their decisions and the default is to always
be pro-customer. Our commitment is to
give an amazing experience to our guests
and our associates and every decision we
make is delivering on that promise.
Mike: We have the same approach at Post
University and it starts with our CEO Tom
Samph. Tom has said this to me and I’ve
heard him say it to others as well: “I hired
you because you know what to do.” He
expects that you are just going to do your
job. He gives you the guideline from the
beginning that everything we do has to
be with an eye toward providing the best
student experience possible. When you
combine that level of autonomy with that
overarching guideline, it makes it fairly easy
to empower your people.
What I try to do is give each team member
guidelines about their areas of responsibility. And then beyond that, it’s just about
communication between us.
There’s a lot of trust that has to be built to
empower others, and part of that trust is
letting people make mistakes. What I tell
my team is make your mistake, make it
early and make it big. Get it over with and
get it out of the way. It’s going to happen,
but own up to it, communicate it as soon
as possible and let’s deal with it because
that’s how you learn.
15