The Magic of IT Empowerment

We have all read countless case studies in which the manager in some stuffy mom and pop machine shop buys his staff a high-speed internet connection, a wireless hub, and 10 laptops, and transforms it into some lean, mean globalization machine with an Assets Turnover Ratio launching right off the financial statements into the stratosphere. We get the point. IT infrastructure has the uncanny ability to enhance productivity and efficiency of today’s worker. The degree to how much productivity is enhanced depends on the job performed of course (a spreadsheet in the possession of an accountant is much more effective than a spreadsheet in the possession of a brick layer). However, it can be said that today’s employee has the ability to process information more rapidly, and communicate and collaborate with a greater breadth of people and depth of information.

Consider the following scenarios: A lawyer in a Vancouver office works with a co-worker in Toronto on a fraud case using NetMeeting, Instant Messenger, and other instant communication tools; these very same tools are used by an introverted software programmer to communicate with a gregarious tester sitting in the adjacent cube, who normally resents the programmer’s lack of verbal communication.

In both scenarios, the following has occurred:

1. Barriers to communications, both physical and sociological, have come down.
2. It seems that distance is not much of a problem, as long as the infrastructure is in place to allow seamless communication. However, as in the first case, time difference can be.

Due to this, organizations can flatten out, cutting costs of bureaucratic channels of communication and oversight between groups. Finally, the worker can make informed decisions regarding colleagues, customers, supervisors, and any other stakeholders involved in their daily activities. Empowering workers can lead to business success.