BACKGROUND

Fantus Technologies has dealt with organisations in which the basic rules of empowerment have played a key role in the effective rollout of change. The three empowerment rules are as follows:

1. Share accurate information with everyone

Success today depends on team effort. Those leaders who are unwilling to share accurate and detailed performance information with their people will never have their people as partners in running the company successfully and will never have an empowered organisation.

Sharing all information, even sensitive information, takes courage. People without accurate information cannot act responsibly whilst people with accurate information feel compelled to act responsibly. Withholding information carries all kinds of messages – people don’t feel trusted.

2. Create autonomy through boundaries

Boundaries have to clarify the range within which people have autonomy. Examples of boundary areas that create autonomy are:

Purpose	What business are you in?
Values	What are your operational guidelines?
Image	What is your picture of the future?
Goals	What, when, where and how do you do what you do?
Roles	Who does what?
Organisational structure and systems	How do you support what you want to do?

3. Replace hierarchical thinking with self-managed teams

A self-managed team consists of a group of employees who take responsibility for an entire process. People can learn to work in self-directed teams and to make and implement their decisions. Everyone shares equally in the responsibilities; people do not wait to be told what to do next. Everybody acts like a manager. Empowerment comes from teaching others things they can do to become less dependent on you – not to step in so that somebody else can act.

Another critical success factor in a best-practice organisation is its ability to measure. Measuring is an excellent idea. The problem lies in the fact that information is usually scattered across many programmes or is on someone’s machine in an Excel spreadsheet. Effective use of information requires information to be available in a simple format as soon after the event as possible. Short Interval Control and actions can only be adhered to if the data is known or accessible to all the relevant parties.

Fantus Technologies have developed software solutions to make the management of key information simple. We cover two key aspects, namely:

Performance Monitoring (you only get what you measure)
Monitoring and Evaluation

The software that has been developed is user-friendly and is aimed at self-management of data at first-line management level. It works effectively for multiple users.