ENABLING MANAGEMENT

Empowered is one of those overused and abused words, but it is hard to talk about measurement and management without embracing the notion of empowerment. By empowering someone, power that was previously at a higher organizational level is now reassigned and redefines a person’s role, giving him or her the responsibility for making a decision, authority to make that decision, and accountability for the results of that decision. In truth, most people are uncomfortable making decisions, and sociologists have noted that this discomfort is really at the root of our hierarchical social and economic system.

Measurement and quantitative information are essential parts of decision support systems (DSS). They are intended to increase the decision maker’s confidence level by providing a better understanding of alternative options for a decision and for forecasting the consequences of any particular decision option.

Another consequence of empowering those at lower levels of an organization is that they will be within the larger population of the organization and will naturally have more communication channels to deal with. Decision makers at lower levels need to provide more people with certain information and, in turn, receive information from more people than was required when the decision was made at a higher level of the organization. Less of this information is summarized (“the bottom line”) than is customary when conveying information to higher organizational levels.