18 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Zapp or Sapp?

One of my favorite books on management is a simple story of a worker named Ralph at a normal company (in fact it’s called that!), where some units function well and some don’t, and employees have lots of ideas about how to make the place better, but few are able to put their ideas into action and most are frustrated and checked out. Ralph is efficient at his work and a tinkerer. Somehow, he transforms the company’s standard product into a new device that allows him—or anyone—to observe their surroundings in the 12th dimension. One day, Ralph’s supervisor happens onto the new device and also ends up in the 12th dimension with Ralph, where the two of them observe, wonder about, and come to understand what is going on there. The most striking feature of this dimension is that some people and areas glow with energy, with interactions prompting crackles of new energy creation, while other areas are dark and morbid, and interactions there only make them more so. The book is about Ralph and his supervisor coming to understand how to make all of the areas glow. The book is named, Zapp! The lightning of empowerment.

We all need to try to empower each other with every interaction—again, as TobyMac urges us, Speak Life. There is lots and lots of research on the critical importance of empowerment, ranging from academic journals and the Harvard Business Review, to publications coming out of management consulting firms like McKinsey, which states simply, “Fully empowered employees make good decisions and resolve problems.” I would add that the same holds true for everyone else—empowerment gives vitality to children, students, teens, adults, relatives, friends, colleagues.

But what is empowerment? In the business setting, it is about

1.       ensuring there is a shared understanding of desired outcomes,

2.       identifying and dedicating the resources and capabilities needed to complete the work,

3.       aligning individuals’ competencies with roles, charging them with their responsibilities, and giving them latitude to fulfill them, and

4.       coordinating and collaborating to encourage, appreciate, support, and redirect as necessary.

It is not about asking people to make decisions with no resources or preparation, no direction, or without ongoing interaction. Encouragement is often talked about, and really important, but without the other components of empowerment, it can be hollow, and even frustrating.

Getting back to Ralph and the 12th dimension, you probably already guessed that the interactions that prompted crackles of new energy creation within each person and unit were empowering interactions that gave people the vision, belief, and authority to accomplish great things, which they did— the author called these interactions Zapp!s.

On the other hand, the interactions that made people more morbid and gloomy in the 12th dimension were interactions that left them confused, frustrated, and apathetic—the author called these interactions Sapp!s. As you can imagine, people getting Zapped all the time are excited about their work and are continually innovating to solve problems, while people getting Sapped all the time dread their work and have given up. All of this is pretty simplistic, but I personally find the visual of getting and giving Zapps or Sapps to be helpful.

We all need to try to Zapp/empower each other with every interaction—and try to circle back when we get the sense that we’ve Sapped someone to see if we can convert it to a Zapp. That is definitely not what we see in the world, but, along with gratitude, discussed in another chapter, it’s a way we can make the world a better place every time we interact with someone. We need to make our world glow like the sun in the 12th dimension!

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