Principle 1: Golden Rule
Authorities and accountabilities must match.

This first Principle is the most fundamental, absolutely essential to the success of every organization:

Authority and accountability must always match.

If ever authorities and accountabilities are separated, serious problems inevitably arise:

• On one hand, the person with authorities, but not matching accountabilities, becomes an unconstrained tyrant.

  This wording may seem a bit strong. But in fact such people can make decisions without bearing the consequences; they can tell others what to do, while others are held accountable for results. So there's little to stop such a person from issuing edicts that may or may not be practical, and then letting others take the blame when their commands backfire. Without checks and balances, they do as they please.

• On the other hand, those with accountabilities, but insufficient authorities, are disempowered and can't get their jobs done.

  People cannot be held accountable for results if they don't have the resources and authorities necessary to achieve those results. Sure, you could try to hold staff accountable for things they can't control; but this won't lead to good performance. All it does is establish a scapegoat to blame when things go wrong. Over time, disempowered people adopt a helpless "victim" mentality, take no initiatives, and spend a lot of time reading Dilbert and laughing about how futile it is to try to accomplish anything important.

In a healthy organization, everybody is accountable for their own results, and is empowered with authority over all the information, resources, and decision powers they need to do their jobs.

One implication is that we manage people by their results; we don't tell them how to do their jobs. The people doing the work are the best qualified to know how to get their jobs done, once they understand what outputs are expected of them. (If they're not, then train or fire them!)

"Don't tell people how to do things; tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results."

George S. Patton

Presuming your staff are competent, let them be creative. Assign them clearly defined results (including compliance with policies, standards, regulations, and the required documentation). Equip them with all the authorities, resources, information, tools and methods, training, and advisors that they need to do the job. Coach and teach them. Then give staff the freedom to deliver their work products in the best way they know.

Essentially, the Golden Rule is the definition of "empowerment." Note that empowerment does not mean anarchy. It's not a blank check whereby people can do whatever they please. People are given authories to match their accountabilities; no more, and no less.

Empowerment is not only essential to employee motivation; it's fundamental to performance.

The Golden Rule affects the design of an organization's structure, culture, resource-management processes, and metrics.

Specifically with regard to structure, the Golden Rule tells us this: Define jobs based on what people produce -- not by the skills people have, or by how they do their work (processes, methods, tools, or tasks).