Steaks and safety pins

A mentor presents an opportunity to highlight the true essence of Scaleable Empowerment℠.

6/17/20222 min read

A mentor who seems to live to quiz me, recently asked me these 2 questions- At what point does an organization start to practice Scaleable Empowerment℠? At what point does it begin to understand how it works?

Before I even started to answer, my old friend started telling me this story:

A man who loved to eat steak lived in a mansion that stood in the middle of 4 farms, one each to the north, east, west and south. Each farm had 1 trusted servant and 1 cow.

One day the man gave his northern servant a safety pin and ordered him to use it to slaughter his assigned cow, for he wanted to eat steak within the next 30 minutes. The northerner, who couldn't disobey the order but wouldn't speak up about the impossibility of the task, found a dull and rusty ax, hacked away at the cow and had served his master a very rough cut of steak within 30 minutes.

Next day, the man called his western servant, gave him a safety pin, and ordered him to slaughter his cow so he could eat steak within the next 30 minutes. The westerner, who used nothing else but the safety pin, reported to his master about his failure, for which the master had him thrown off his property.

On Day 3, the man again calls his southern servant, hands him a safety pin to slaughter his cow and serve the steak in 30 minutes. The southerner, who always kept a well-sanded and sharpened ax, hacked away at the cow, served the best cut of steak in only 20 minutes, but told his master what tool he actually used to get the job done.

On the 4th day, the man handed his eastern servant a well sanded and sharpened ax, and ordered him to serve steak in the next 10 minutes. It happened to be the easterner's 1st time to see an ax.

Scaleable Empowerment℠ is an idea that propositions to shift some of the man's focus away from the love of eating steak, towards understanding and providing the right mix of whos, whats, whens and hows about slaughtering cows, in order to avoid needlessly throwing anyone out. It will attempt to temper madness with method, by marrying sentiment with a bit of science. In extreme cases, Scaleable Empowerment would compel the man to decide whether the steak is truly worth slaughtering the cow for.

In my old mentor's story, the man who loved steak began practising Scaleable Empowerment℠ right at the very start, when he still trusted all his servants. But he began to understand it only with the help of the southern servant. It seemed that on the 4th day, however, the master's focus went back to eating steak.

Scaleable Empowerment℠ will feel like a marathon, not just a sprint. It will focus on the journey, not just on the destination. It is a mindset, not just a series of actions.