Empowering Workers with Technology in the Age of Tech Populism

These days, when you need to share a 100MB file with a customer, you have two options: Go to IT and ask for a way to do it, wait 3 weeks, and finally be told the only option is to express a disc; or just set up a Dropbox account and send it this afternoon, without asking anyone. It's the age of Technology Populism, and it suggests that the office dynamics of using technology are changing.

In a recent Harvard Business Review editorial by Ted Schadler, Schadler makes the point that increasingly, knowledge workers are devising their own solutions to tech problems -- using cloud storage, social media, and smartphones -- and IT frequently either doesn't know about it or becomes a road block in its implementation by taking a hardline position on risk.

Instead, there's a collaborative middle ground. Using the HERO (highly empowered and resourceful operatives) framework, IT needs to partner with the folks on the line who are devising these contemporary workarounds, select the ones with the most potential and the least risk, and help foster their adoption by scaling up the solution across the company and providing tool to mitigate any additional risks.

It's an interesting approach, and one that's badly needed in conserrvative organizations where IT advances at a snail's pace in order to completely understand the risk before ever deploying badly needed solutions. To get there, though, Shadler says there are some important elements that need to be in place, forming a triad among employee, manager, and IT:

• Employees need to behave responsibly.
• Managers need to roll up their sleeves and learn enough about the technology to understand the potential risks.
• IT needs to assess and mitigate technology risk -- which means they need to move into employee workspaces and work much more closely with the folks proposing these solutions.