A genius parenting hack applied to business.

I wrote yesterday about my dad’s accidental parenting genius.

By asking his kids which movies he should see, my dad not only empowered us with decisions that impacted our lives, but also decisions that impacted his life.

He trusted us to maintain his integrity.

In business, it may be easy to empower employees to most decisions that affect them or their department. Yet, how many of the decisions that impact the whole organization do we allow second and third tier leaders to make?

Here’s what I mean. If decisions that impact the whole organization are only handled at the executive level, then the onus is never on the other leaders to make value based decisions. This isn’t “What would be the boss do?” but rather “Is this a decision that would maintain the boss’s integrity?” Subtle, but powerful difference.

Am I suggesting that executives push all major decisions down the flowchart? Of course not.

But if only a few people ever get to make important decisions, or decisions that only impact their department, they learn that they are not capable of making value based decisions. Their decisions don’t impact the whole.

Occasionally, ask for input from someone 2 or three tiers down. You might be surprised to find that your values start to seep into other areas of decision making.