Go to any large corporate website and, in a couple of clicks, you’ll learn the importance of their ‘passionate people’. Few visitors will believe this reflects reality. Probably because it so rarely does.

While most bosses genuinely want to empower their people to do better work, they end up building hierarchies counterproductive to that goal. A ‘flat’ or a ‘deep’ structure is not that important. What matters is how information is shared, acted on and developed by the group. It must flow freely between all the people involved in the process of planning and performing work.

Ideas from diverse sources and people have a habit of building on each other. Finance has a perspective that’s useful to marketing. Supply chain makes a contribution to HR. IT listens in to what Sales has to say about customer experience. Being heard, at whatever level you participate in the management of the work, encourages a deeper level of participation, motivation and engagement. And in the process, it builds a more agile organisation.

More often than not, leverage resides in the connections people make, rather than in their own heads. Accessing that power requires sharing and transparency. Yet such openness rubs up against ingrained habits of silo-based working patterns. There’s a natural anxiety about relying on your subordinates’ and peers’ ability to hold and interpret information—even keep secrets about sensitive information—which, if seen by outsiders could harm your organisation, your team, or you personally.

Paradoxically, however, if you want high performance to become routine, you need to engage the broadest possible pool of experience and talent. For an organisation to truly flourish, decision-making powers need to be at the lowest level of the organisation competent to wield them.

At one level of accountability, you ask the right people to make recommendations, but leave the decision-making part in your hands. It’s quite different, though, to ask them to actually make the decision. This demands from them a deeper level of processing to understand the possible effects of their decisions, making them far more likely to wield their discretionary powers more judiciously.

Having the courage to overcome your misgivings about letting go of the kind of control you’ve likely worked so hard to cultivate is no easy ask. It requires trust. We all have that voice in the head arguing, ‘I would rather be the one to control the information and decisions if I’m to take ultimate accountability.’

The paradox is, if you have chosen the right people in your team, having them take on accountability for their decisions leads to better outcomes all round. The right people have integrity, share your intention, have been selected for their competence and can demonstrate results. Give them all this, and the passion will take care of itself.