# Being Told You are Empowered By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2023-03-24 Be skeptical the second a manager says you are empowered to say no and change the organization. It might be true. Perhaps you aren't stepping up to the plate. However, it often reflects the frustration and failure of the manager who is providing the feedback. By organizational theory and hierarchy, they are higher than you. By definition, they have more power than you within the organization. So, if they are so keen on change, why don't they decide to make it so? Why must the "grunts" be the ones to force the change to happen? While the grunts will be the ones who execute the change, they are far from having to authority to make that decision. This is the whole point of having managers oversee workers. This dynamic may not exist in metamodern organizations, but it is commonplace everywhere else you look. Should managers listen to the workers? Yes. Should managers put their failure on the workers through some clever turn of fad engagement phrases? Absolutely not. This does not absolve workers from playing a productive role in organizational progress. Workers must take responsibility to hold the managers accountable for these bad practices and their innate failures as managers. Alas, there is no real and meaningful vehicle in modern organizations for workers to do this. Unions are busted, and talk of workplace democracy is a joke. So, workers vote with their legs and get out when they can. The trouble is that many can't leave. They are stuck in captivity. Stockholm Syndrome kicks in, and the rest is modern business history. If I'm really an empowered worker, how do I fire management when they become incompetent? This is scary stuff for managers, but this is what real empowerment looks like. #### Related Items [[Empowerment]] [[Management Fads]] [[Work]] [[Democracy]] [[Decision-making]] [[Management]]