We all have customers in our daily work life, internal and external. When the mission of an organization is to ensure that customer’s needs are met or exceeded it can be very powerful. If we consider this primary goal in every interaction with each customer, ‘did my output meet the need of my customer’, then the measure of success can be quite simple.
Now ask, ‘am I empowered’, ‘are my people empowered’? While following the process and tasks associated with meeting the need, if one hits a roadblock, are they empowered to bring in the necessary resources to mitigate the roadblock to meet the customer’s need? If that professional needs permissions or does not have the authority to meet the customer need it triggers several events that cost time.
The person will need to obtain permission, trigger different process, likely schedule meetings which leads to more individual’s spending time discussing the roadblock. All the while, your customer is waiting resolution. Each moment it takes to obtain resolution, your customer is waiting, hopefully patiently.
When employees are empowered to make decisions and deploy resources for the common customer satisfaction goal it mitigates the need for ‘red tape’. Obviously sound policies and procedures are needed to ensure the success of all levels of an organization as they strive to achieve customer satisfaction for their customers.