Empowerment. It appears in almost every corporate presentation. Afterwards: a workshop, a new picture on the intranet homepage — and on Monday morning the boss still assigns all the tasks herself.
Employees play along — they are polite. But everyone knows: this is borrowed. It can be taken back at any time.
Three mistakes have repeated for decades:
1. Empowerment by grace. „You may now decide for yourself.“ The boss permits it — the boss remains the owner. Real autonomy ends where it can be revoked. Employees sense immediately: given or lent?
2. The visibility belongs to the boss. If empowerment produces anything visible, it lands in her report. The employee ends up owning nothing but a good feeling. No proof, no account, no „this is mine.“
3. The suspicion of disadvantage. Whoever uses the new freedom — and once does not — quietly wonders whether it will be held against them later. Freedom with suspicion is not freedom.
Real empowerment is not a seminar. It is a mechanism. Three criteria:
Autonomy with a mechanism: tasks are openly visible. Whoever takes them decides freely. It is not the boss who permits — it is the rule that permits.
Performance that belongs to the employee: points land in a private account. Not even management can read individual values. Points are private property, not a shop window.
No penalty for not taking part: whoever declines a task receives no punishment. Points are recognition, never deduction. Those who don’t want to, stay undisturbed — those who want to, are seen.
2006, pilot project at a German corporation. Before the project, employees asked: „Why me?“ — the defensive question against assignment from above.
During the project, the question flipped:
„Why don’t I get the work?“
That is real empowerment in one sentence. Employees want the work — because it visibly counts, because it is theirs, because it is voluntary. Result: +20 percent productivity, from the first month, without bonuses.
The same mechanism can flip into its opposite. Another large corporation introduced points as a threat: „whoever has the fewest, has to go.“ The result: everything was snatched away, colleagues turned against each other, the team broke apart.
The lesson: the mechanism unleashes — in both directions. That is why GoodPoints makes the fear variant technically impossible: private points, anonymised comparisons, no deductions, no expulsion roles. More on this: Fear or Recognition.
Exchange is older than any hierarchy. Points for performance work in Saarbrücken as well as in Singapore, in crafts as in care services, in clubs as in corporations. GoodPoints therefore runs in German, English and French — test the model yourself in 2 minutes.
© 2026 · Dr.-Ing. Walter Tritt