(Refer to Part X for explanation of the 5 levels)
As a manager you can't just show up to work and expect that your subordinates will automatically aspire to Level 4 or 5 independence. You have to actually train them! And once you've trained them, you have to follow up in order to assure yourself that your subordinates really know what they're doing. Just telling a subordinate that you expect them to work independently and make their own decisions doesn't mean that they will. (And we're talking here about ability and understanding, insubordination is a completely different subject). And even after a subordinate has been instructed in the expectations of the job, doesn't mean that they have been trained. And even after you are sure that they fully understand all aspects of the job and have the ability to carry them out, being fully trained means that they are actually doing it. If you don't follow up and ensure that the work is being done you run the risk of your subordinate deciding on his own what his job should be, and that might be very different than what you expect!
Back when I managed grocery stores we had a position called Grocery Clerk. This was an entry-level position and was almost always filled by high school kids who had never held a job before. The clerks had two main jobs: retrieve carts from the parking lot and "pull cardboard". They had other duties as well, but those are the two main ones. Pulling cardboard involved methodically going through an aisle, section by section, and removing any cardboard boxes that were less than half full and then "facing", pulling all the product forward on the shelf. (This was what was called a "warehouse" store, most product was put on the shelf in the case that in came in, with the front and top cut off.) The purpose of this was to keep the shelves orderly and make it easy for the customers to see the products. Something called a "cardboard bin", a wheeled, plastic container, 4'x4'x4' was utilized to throw the cardboard in. This was mind-numbingly, boring work, but it had to be done. It was also extremely simple to master, but it was almost never done correctly.
The problem was training. What should have been done was that each new grocery clerk be teamed up with a manager for half of a shift, released for a few hours to work on his own, and then back with the manager for follow up. For the first few weeks the clerk's work should have been checked by a manager until it was assured that proper training had taken place. What did happen was that the new clerk was teamed up with an "experienced" clerk who probably was doing things incorrectly himself, ensuring that the cycle of incompetence would continue. Look in on most grocery clerks allegedly pulling cardboard and you'll see two of them strolling down an aisle, chatting (grocery clerks are almost never supposed to be working two-by-two, pulling cardboard is a one-person job), pulling the occasional box off the shelf, without a cardboard bin, then strolling to the back room to throw out the small amount of cardboard that they can hold in their arms. And there is rarely, if ever, a manager checking up on them.
A few years ago I conducted an experiment. I watched as a grocery clerk exited an aisle that he had supposedly just got done pulling cardboard in. (He had a cardboard bin). I entered the same aisle and pulled cardboard and faced the correct way. I piled all the cardboard on the floor in front of each section and then called him back to show him what he had missed. He was not happy, but he did learn what was expected of him.
The nature of the training is critically important to the ultimate achievement of higher level competence. During my final 10 years before retirement I worked for the state revenue department. My training was a bewildering hodgepodge of regulations, definitions, and statutes in a Power Point presentation. During training my mind raced, trying to keep track of all the information that was being shot at me. Most of it made no sense to me, since it was completely without context. What I wasn't being presented with was the practical information that I needed in order to do my job. After training was over and began my assigned tasks another new trainee and I figured out the actual requirements of the job by trial and error. We learned to focus on what we really needed to do the job and pretty much ignore the rest. Over the years I heard from other new hires how confusing and useless the training was.
Eventually I was promoted to a position where I was responsible for training the new people. With my manager's permission I completely revamped the training program so that it focussed on how to do the job, with the regulations, definitions and other details presented as an adjunct to the practical instruction. I revised a checklist so that a new hire could methodically carry out their assigned tasks. The new training program was practical rather than theoretical and was key to getting employees to the goal of working independently.
Sometimes the lesson managers get from the Five Levels of Management Freedom is that everybody should be at Level 4 or 5 and that they are just supposed to sit back and watch everyone work. (Presumably with their feet up on their desks). That is the wrong lesson! Subordinates at Levels 4 and 5 doesn't free managers from work, it frees them from other people's work so they can concentrate on managerial work.
Getting everyone to at least Level 3 and ideally Levels 4 and 5 is the goal; but how do you accomplish that goal? Not by wishful thinking or by simply telling people to manage themselves, but by putting in the hard work of training subordinates to be not just "hard workers", but independent thinkers and problem solvers.
Training can be very time-consuming, but the result is worth the time.
Start with Part I
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