Losing Good People? Identify and Eliminate Workarounds to Keep Them Around.

What is a Workaround?

It simply means circumventing something that’s keeping us from completing a task or achieving a goal. It’s like “walking around” an obstacle in a path. When we encounter persistent barriers to regular tasks, we find ways to overcome them. That’s a workaround. The term came into the business vernacular in the ‘80s and ’90s. It most likely started in computer programming but has become common in many aspects of organizational life.

Two Organizational Truths

Workarounds are a testament to two organizational truths:

• First, most people are wonderfully adaptive, creative, and goal-oriented.
• Second, workarounds are a result of what I call constrained empowerment.

The first truth is positive. It tells us that when most people are faced with obstacles preventing them from achieving a desired outcome, their default setting seems to be to innovate ways to overcome them. However, there is a dark side to this positive truth. Leaders often over-rely on the adaptive abilities of their people, believing that their teams can endlessly do more and more with less and less.

And that leads to the second truth. Workarounds are a function of constrained empowerment. But, what does that mean? Empowerment, in this sense, represents all of the ways leaders can create an environment where their people are more likely to succeed. Workarounds reflect times when resources are constrained to the point that someone finds a better way to get their job done.

Five Flavors of Empowerment

The root of the word empowerment is “power”. Empowerment occurs when we imbue or give power to someone else to act. In work settings, Empowerment comes in five main flavors:

• Authority and Autonomy to Act
• Clear and Compelling Direction
• Accurate and Timely Feedback and Information
• Necessary Capabilities and Skills
• Sufficient Tools, Space, and Time

When any of these five flavors is not present in sufficient quantity or quality to effectively achieve a goal, empowerment is constrained and workarounds will ensue. If empowerment is constrained too much, then workers will literally resign and leave, or at least resign themselves to mechanically go through the motions leaving their innovation and adaptability at the door.

A Thought Experiment – Your First Job

Think of your first real paying job where you received an actual paycheck from an organization. Perhaps it was working in a fast-food restaurant, or in some kind of janitorial role, or (like me) in a grocery store. Now think about the work you did. Did you experience any persistent workarounds? Were some of these passed down from previous generations of employees? Which of the five flavors of empowerment were more or less present for you in your young work-life?

Perhaps you were lucky enough to work in an organization with clear objectives, strong training programs, appropriate autonomy, excellent feedback, and sufficient tools and resources to do what you were asked to do. If so, congratulations! However, from my experience, most first jobs are painful reminders of how frustrating life can be with constrained empowerment.

Eliminate Workarounds to Keep Great Talent!

Whenever attrition rises (or rumblings of attrition increase), one proactive thing managers can do is go hunting for workarounds. Workarounds can become a barometer of pending (and pent-up) frustration. Identify the workaround, figure out which of the flavors of empowerment are missing then try investing in a fix.

Of course, there will always be limits on how much leaders can invest in empowering their teams. But, my belief is that a little investment can go a long way! Most companies could do far more to create environments of empowerment without spending significant money.

So, the next time you start losing good people, try finding the workarounds and the constrained empowerment they represent and do what you can to fix them. You just might empower someone to stay!