Sears Holding Corp. has been looking for a CEO for over a year, according to reports in today's Chicago Tribune, and the problem in filling this key role may very well lie with Edward Lampert, the hedge-fund owner operator of Sears.  The problem apparently stems from the fact that Lampert is unwilling to give the new CEO the freedom to set direction and the power to hold sway over business unit leaders.

In essence, the CEO position is empowered to have very little impact on the organization without Lampert's direct involvement.

While this perspective is catastrophic for an organization's CEO, it is equally problematic for a company's management and leaders throughout the heirarchy.  If you are unwilling to empower your leaders to take decisive action to meet the quickly changing conditions in the marketplace and with your customers, you can safely assume you too could enjoy continuously declining sales and marketshare by the once venerable Sears.

Ambitious and talented individuals must be allowed to act.  Yes, they may make mistakes.  However, their growth as managers and leaders comes from those mistakes.  And their steps into uncharted areas may open up competitive advantages otherwise untapped.

The key way to manage empowered managers is to develop meaningful and measurable performance metrics, meet with them on a regular basis to review progress and issues, and to hold them accountable for those metrics.  As a final thought: if managers are not empowered and challenged to make decisions as they progress through the ranks, your organization will never have the ability to cultivate internal talent so that options exist for the next series of necessary promotions.