“No Decision about us without us” – a charter mark for empowered organisations
“Tell me about a time when you experienced power in your own life?”.
This was a question posed by Calum Green from Involve, leading the workshop “No decision about us without us”. I was at Notwestminster in Huddersfield, a conference bringing together the people, the ideas, and the energy to improve local democracy.
Reflecting on my own experiences of power, I could only think of work – in management or being managed. It is after all, one of few places where we have a designated role in an organisational structure. It brought to the surface genuine feelings of frustration. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but feel underwhelmed that my personal reflections on empowerment were salaried.
Many others shared similar reflections of power centred around employment. My table partner spoke of a more personal example where her interaction with care services had put her grandmother’s life in danger and left her feeling utterly powerless. Regardless of the circumstance, the same frustrations emerged: decisions were deferred without consultation; there was a lack of transparency about the decision-making process; managers did not listen to those most impacted by the decision.
Sound familiar?
Although much energy goes into reclaiming power from politics and politicians, it is the places we work, and the services we interact with that often do the most to empower and disempower in our day to day lives.
Using this as a guide, we embarked on the next stage of the workshop: to come up with ideas on how we could better empower people to be involved in decision making in organisations. Through a short brainstorm, we came up with some solutions. It was soon pointed out that what we raised resembled the beginnings for a charter mark framework for what an empowered, people-centred organisation.
So, in the spirit of back of the envelope transformational change, these are the six points that were captured. For each point, I’ve attempted to flesh out some best practice principles on what this could look like. This is linked to SORTED methods, I’ve referred to in other posts: adopting principles of deliberative democracy in organisations to become more creative, collaborative and empowered.
A Charter Mark for empowered organisations
Inclusive idea generation
Identifying all stakeholders linked to that organisational setting and designing processes to include them in the idea generation and policy formation
Co-creating policies and practices with service users and employees.
2. Transparency on how decisions are made.
Clearly defined and transparent process maps which are accessible to both employees and service users.
Demonstrating a culture of honesty and accountability with how decisions are made.
Open and collaborative procedures to challenge and co-create solutions.
3. Consultation to ensure understanding.
Consultations are multi-directional and facilitate learning on all sides.
Ability to demonstrate that consultations are linked to outcomes rather to performative processes to legitimise a predetermined outcome.
4. Social responsibility for decisions.
Organisations engage with public, or more specifically those impacted by their decisions through deliberative processes to understand the wider impact.
Independent scrutiny panels set up using sortition to hold the organisation to account for the impact of their actions.
5. Buy-in to needs of the frontline.
Engage frontline employees in formulating strategy to better understand the needs of the organisation.
Set up deliberative and policy designs processes to facilitate this
6. The decision makers are accountable.
Those with named authority to set up channels to be accountable to both their employees and the service users. This can coincide with many of the examples linked above.
These decision makers make themselves available to respond directly to those who contribute these deliberative forums.
They demonstrate an openness to changing their mind based on the needs of all the stakeholders.
So, there you have it, the summary of a half hour round-table discussion on how to recognise excellence in empowered, people-centred organisations. There’s a lot of work still to be done.
As organisations continue to strive to recognise the value that this approach can bring to both their profit and purpose, it is about time to assemble scaffolding to help them achieve this.