Beyond Empowerment Building a Company of Citizens - by brook manville
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This document discusses building companies of citizens beyond employee empowerment. It summarizes the successful democratic system used in ancient Athens and argues modern companies still have hierarchical structures and governance systems from the industrial age. The author advocates adopting participatory structures, communal values, and engagement practices seen in Athens to foster long-term employee loyalty and embrace of company interests, rather than today's focus on short-term employability. Specifically, Athens had flat governance, values balancing individuality and community, and practices ensuring access, process, and consequences engaged citizens. The document argues the Athenian model provides a window into self-governance but not simple prescriptions, and requires a coherent system combining structures, values and practices.
Beyond Empowerment Building a Company of Citizens - by brook manville
- 1. BEYOND EMPOWERMENT: BUILDING A COMPANY OF CITIZENS - BROOK MANVILLE Submitted by Abhinav K.P MBA – A
- 2. ABOUT THE AUTHOR • Brook Manville is Principal of Brook Manville, LLC. His consulting work focuses on strategy, organization development and transformation, and executive leadership. • Brook has a special expertise in knowledge management, organizational learning, leadership development and knowledge-based strategies; he also serves as an executive coach to a wide range of leaders. • Brook spent a major part of his career as a partner at McKinsey & Company, specializing in organizational development and knowledge-related strategy. • Brook holds a Ph.D. in history from Yale (1979) and undergraduate degrees in classics from Oxford (1975) and Yale (1972).
- 3. BEYOND EMPOWERMENT: BUILDING A COMPANY OF CITIZENS Corporate ownership structures, governance systems, and incentive programs—despite the enlightened rhetoric of business leaders—are still firmly planted in the industrial age. Business organizations have become less bureaucratic in recent years and that authority has been pushed down through the ranks. Workers are able to make decisions about their immediate jobs or to participate in somewhat broader decisions about their own units, but they still have little or no voice in decisions about the direction of the overall company.
- 4. ARCHITECTURE OF CITIZENSHIP Democracy of ancient Athens is successful: * System was not imposed on the Athenian people *System was holistic Athenian democracy encompassed *Participatory structures *Set of communal values *Array of practices
- 5. PARTICIPATORY STRUCTURES Governance had radically flat organization Every adult male Athenian had the opportunity to attend the great citizen assembly To ensure that the decisions of the populace would be executed swiftly and well Transparent procedural rules governed judicial and policy-making processes, keeping them simple, fair, and flexible
- 6. People with expertise came forward whenever their skills were needed, without becoming part of any standing bureaucracy?
- 7. Communal Values: Establishing democratic structures is not enough, of course A distinctive set of values made the personal communal and the communal personal A second set of Athenian values, balancing those that focused on individuality, centered on community
- 8. How many knowledge workers today would automatically embrace the company’s interest as their own?
- 9. Two significant differences between the modern concept of employability and the Athenian concept of moral reciprocity: *Employability does not foster long-term loyalty *Employability contracts and moral reciprocity is less obvious
- 10. PRACTICES OF ENGAGEMENT An organization’s practices define its culture, how work gets done. Practices of access Practices of process Practices of consequences
- 11. LOOKING AHEAD Athenian model of organizational democracy is just that a model Does not provide a simple set of prescriptions for modern managers It offers a window into how sizable groups of people can successfully govern themselves It shows the need to combine structures, values, and practices in a coherent, self-sustaining system
- 12. THANK YOU……….