Empowered organizations, empowering leaders

Empowered organizations value autonomy as an end in itself - an end that contributes to personal fulfillment and advances democratic ideas in organizations. In empowered organizations, people at all levels, including leaders, are actively engaged in managing themselves. But some fundamental leadership functions are required to support an empowered organization and to ensure that people support organizational goals: 1. to define the organization's mission and align employees with that mission, 2. to develop and maintain trust throughout the organization, 3. to facilitate the coordination of organizational activities in support of the mission, 4. to facilitate communication at all levels so that information is widely available and used, 5. to ensure learning so that all transactions become opportunities for improvement, and 6. to ensure creativity to continuously create new practices, processes, products, and services of value to the organization and its customers.