Michael Gerber’s book “The EMyth Revisited” coaches business owners on being successful by shifting their thinking to working on their business, not just in it. In this article, we will follow a parallel theme on coaching employees to work on their roles and not just in them. Michael Gerber encourages a paradigm shift of moving from an owner dependent company to a system-dependent business. To accomplish this shift change, owners need to evolve their beliefs to depending on systems to run the business. Employees can shift to working on their roles by evolving their beliefs to depending on a support system for role knowledge.

Don’t be the knowledge expert

The most significant step employees can take to work on their roles is shifting from the belief that they have to be the knowledge expert. Knowing 100% of all the role-based knowledge details is a burdensome state to reach and sustain. Knowledge details are easy to forget, and they quickly become outdated when processes are changed. Trying to be a knowledge expert on all the details creates a barrier that keeps employees stuck with working in the role. Employees are working on their role when they can provide the following answer about knowledge details “I’m not sure, let’s look it up.” They are demonstrating more control over their role by using a support system.  They are shifting control to reviewing accurate details rather than struggling to recall partially memorized information.

Support Resource System

Michael Gerber suggests writing an operations manual for modeling a turn-key operation to build the business into a franchise. This approach supports just the documentation flow of process information. The owner is responsible for generating the procedure documents, and the employees are required to memorize the content for training.  Gerber’s document approach missed the opportunity to empower employees.  Providing an organizational knowledge application empowers employees to be more self-sufficient in using and developing role-based knowledge.

Employees can work their roles by recording role-based knowledge in support resource system. Using an organizational knowledge application for a support resource shifts the employees’ role responsibility from being a knowledge custodian to being a knowledge power user. When the employee only knows 90% of the details, they can depend on the support resource for the remaining 10%. Using a support resource provides employees a knowledge foundation to perform the tasks for their role confidently.

Improve the Role

The ultimate goal behind having employees work on their roles is to encourage the development of process improvements. When employees can review their procedures, they are more open to examine and scrutinize the details for areas of improvement. They are now able to step out of the role and take an objective view of their process knowledge. Instead of mentally juggling the knowledge details, they can analyze the procedure information and apply their talent to implement improvements. To sustain the practice of role improvements, employees administer the updates to their role-based knowledge and maintain support for future use of the improved process information.

Knowledge platform for team members

Employees are members of the business team, and they need to be able to share their role-based knowledge with other team members.  Many process improvements can affect procedures from multiple roles.  The role members need to collaborate to determine the details for the procedure changes. Without a support resource, these sharing sessions can become cumbersome with getting everyone in sync about procedure details. Using the support resource improves collaboration with a central knowledge platform.  Team members can review and work through all the details necessary to implement the process improvement changes.

Empowering employees will empower owners

Michael Gerber’s life’s work has been to empower business owners to enjoy the benefits of working on their business and not just in it. This article has been about empowering employees to work on their roles and enjoy more success with their jobs. We explored the benefits of using a support resource for role-based knowledge. By using the support resource, employees have improved success with their job tasks, implementing improvements, and working with team members.  The support resource for employees also empowers owners with more time to work on the business.

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