Several years ago, we worked with a senior leadership team of a large, complex regional organization with dozens of locations and tens of thousands of employees.
The CEO came to us with a problem:
"We're doing everything we can to empower people. They just don't want to take responsibility."
The senior team met weekly and had done a great job describing their ways of working – they had a clear charter for not just the LT, but the way they wanted to meet, and how they wanted to interact with the org.
But even with a high level of intention, and the work ethic to back it up, they had a problem with team empowerment and engagement in the levels below the SLT.
We dug in further to see why they weren't getting what they wanted, because there's usually something else going on when you hear a quote like this.
