If you are a leader in your organization, have you "empowered your employees?" Has your leader "empowered" you?

As I travel the world evangelizing the power and promise of IT Governance, I talk about employee empowerment with great regularity. I have mixed feelings about utilizing the term because I have found it to be widely misunderstood and consistently misused. I have encountered plenty of organizations that say they empower employees, but I have seen few do what is necessary to actually empower employees.

I joke with my audiences about what exactly takes place when employees are "empowered." Is it a ceremony analogous to Knighting someone? Does the employee kneel before leadership as a sword is tapped lightly on each of their shoulders as the words "You are empowered" are spoken?

This is always good for a little laugh and it provides a lighthearted segue into my formula for empowering employees. I insist there are three critical dimensions of employee empowerment:

• Defining and designing work that is possible and practical
• Providing employees with the knowledge, skills and competencies required to do the work
• Assigning accountability and giving employees the authority to make decisions and take risks to successfully complete the work

Defining and designing work that is possible and practical

This is accomplished by designing, implementing and actively managing reasoned and rational processes. Few organizations do this well because I contend Process Management is one of the most misunderstood and neglected disciplines today. Few Enterprises have invested in mastering the art and science of this critical field.

Providing employees with the knowledge, skills and competencies required to do the work

This is accomplished by providing the education, training, practical experience and mentoring required to function in the processes that make the work possible and practical.

Assigning accountability and giving employees the authority to make decisions and take risks to successfully complete the work

This is the act of recognizing and accepting the fact that the people performing in the process have the greatest understanding of Customer needs and the work required to serve those needs while meeting Enterprise objectives. This accountability eliminates non-value-added work (work that does not serve the customer) i.e. checking, supervising, controlling, etc.

It is my contention that each of these dimensions is absolutely necessary to truly empower employees. Many of the organizations I have visited empower their employees by "allowing" them to make decisions. To their credit, this is usually a quantum leap from the "do only what you are told" model, but it is not enough. Their employees are free to make decisions, but they often lack the competency, skills and confidence to do so. Couple this with the near universal lack of sound work processes, and the result is accountability that leads to blame as opposed to empowerment.

I believe the greatest deficiency in the Employee Empowerment effort is process and process management. Without reasoned and rational processes that make the work possible, all the accountability and training in the world will fall short of empowering employees to succeed in their efforts. Sure, some will rise above these chronic process problems and manage to accomplish something. But work models that require individual heroics are tenuous at best and patently unfair at worst. So I will end this post with the last paragraph from my contribution to Mark Perry's recently released book, "Business Driven PMO Setup"  http://www.jrosspub.com/Engine/Shopping/catalog.asp?store=12&category=182&item=14196&itempage=1. Mark had encountered my passion for process and he asked me to anchor the section on building high-performance PMO teams. The title of my chapter was "Better Process Means Better Performance." Here is the closing summary:

The benefits of good process have been studied and well documented by renowned industry leaders such as Michael Hammer, Geary Rummler with Alan Brache, and Jack Welch of General Electric. Companies have seen significant performance improvements through Six Sigma and LEAN process frameworks. There is a mountain of evidence and numerous examples of the power and promise of good process. But what excites me the most is what good process means to people - to the workers in an enterprise. Processes bring meaning to all work, no matter how small the task. People are no longer vague cogs in the machine. They are critical members of a process team. They are the ones with the accountability and authority to delight the customer. They know they are essential to the success of the enterprise. They matter and they know they matter. Place them in this situation and just watch how they perform.

Do you feel empowered? Have you empowered others? How do you define the term and how do you empower others? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Steve Romero, IT Governance Evangelist