ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 25, 1996 TAG: 9604250039
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ELLIOTT SMITH STAFF WRITER
BUSINESS GURU Ken Blanchard now touts empowerment as the modern manager's mantra.
Those who came Wednesday to hear Ken Blanchard's usual speech about quick management techniques may have been a little surprised. In a six-hour seminar, the author of the "One-Minute Manager" now proposes a lengthier blueprint for success in the corporate jungle.
Blanchard in 1982 co-wrote the best-seller "The One Minute Manager," which has sold more than 10 million copies. He talked about his new set of ideas laid out in his most recent book, "Empowerment Takes More Than a Minute."
The seminarwas sponsored by Virginia Tech's Pamplin College of Business.
The three tenets of empowerment, according to Blanchard, are: sharing information with everyone, creating autonomy through boundaries and replacing hierarchies with self-directed teams. Blanchard added that people in organizations already have power, but that empowerment is merely letting it out.
"People would rather be magnificent than ordinary," he said. "We're just trying to get management's ego out of the way."
Pretty different from the man who wrote about managers' quick fixes in the form of "One Minute Praisings" and "One Minute Reprimands." But Blanchard said that the true message hasn't changed over the years.
"I've stayed pretty consistent," he said. "I've just changed my focus. The concepts with empowerment builds on what I've done before."
According to Blanchard, empowerment will create a work environment in the shape of an inverted pyramid - where the workers affect the decisions of management - creating an equal stake for everyone involved.
"Companies are looking toward empowerment more and more," Blanchard said. "You can't do as you did before because your customers will be gone by the time you send problems through the hierarchy.
"The difference will be amazing for customers, because nothing is more frustrating than when they call and someone can't take care of their problems."
Blanchard's message seemed to hit home for the many of the about 500 business professionals in attendance at Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center.
"Our company has done a lot of team training, but this is good because we get to review and reinforce practices that we might lose sight of in day-to-day operation," said Gary King of Kollmorgen Corp.'s Industrial Drives, a motion-control systems company in Radford.
"When we leave here, a lot of us will want to share this information with people," said Carol Marchionda of Maid Bess Corp., a Salem maker of uniforms. "It makes us realize that people are our most important asset."
LENGTH: Medium: 54 linesby CNB