EMPOWERED EMPLOYEES:
HEROES OR SHADOW IT?

Harvard Business Review reports that 37% of employees are using do-it-yourself technologies to solve business and customer challenges--without IT’s permission. When is it valuable innovation, when is it shadow IT?

Employees are increasingly harnessing social, mobile, video and cloud technologies in their business workflow--LinkedIn, Google Docs, Smartsheet.com, YouTube, Dropbox, Flipboard--the list is long and growing.

IT departments may fear this as “shadow IT” but a new report by Forrester Research, "The HERO Index: Finding Empowered Employees" and a new book Empowered, co-authored by Ted Schadler and Josh Bernoff calls for them to recognize this trend as an innovation opportunity which requires a new way of working.

Shadow IT refers to solutions built or used inside organizations without organizational approval that often are not aligned with the organization’s requirements for control, documentation, security, reliability, etc. Many IT leaders remember the mainframe days when a single error in a line of code could shut down a business unit and send scores of employees home for the day. Hence, rigorous controls have been set in place by IT departments charged with managing risks. In an age when viruses and other attacks hit servers tens of thousands of times per day, risk prevention practices and the mindset that goes with them, prevail with good reason. IT leaders also worry that “shadow technologies” may take more and more time from the user’s primary job function to maintain and may ultimately result in IT departments inheriting nightmare technologies they must fix and maintain.

While these concerns are valid, one in three of your information workers is likely already using easily accessible social, mobile, video and cloud technologies that your company does not sanction. Forrester Research says figuring out how to solve a problem without IT’s help is a groundswell worth harnessing. It calls these covert innovators “HEROes” – highly empowered and resourceful operatives. HEROes are those employees who feel empowered to solve their own and customer needs and act resourcefully by using whatever technology gets the job done.

So how do you avoid chaos and rogue behavior? Forrester says IT departments need to get involved to identify the employee initiatives that are worth pursuing and figure out how to make them safe and enterprise-grade.

Empower cites the story of Peter Hambling, the CIO of Lloyd’s of London, who had an employee who wanted to use Facebook to talk to a client and an underwriter who wanted to use a smartphone to access key account and policy information. The business manager and IT security professional, fearing the unknown, shut down both solutions.

As a CIO with business acumen, Hambling understood he and his IT organization needed a new contract with business managers and employees that allowed them to help with technology solutions, while sharing the responsibility for business risk. Hambling obtained permission from the board of directors to proceed with caution and keep a clear eye on the tradeoff between business value and business risk.

Lloyd’s of London didn’t stop with Facebook and iPhone. They embedded IT staff into the cubicle farms of business employees and built innovative solutions with teams comprised of both business users and technologists; they created applications that empower employees to understand global risk through a familiar interactive map. Lloyd’s of London created a new contract with business managers and employees that gave IT professionals a place in the business.

Empower identifies a new contract that is emerging between IT, business managers, and employees, which defines new rules and processes. They call it the HERO Compact and it looks like this:

In the HERO Compact, there is conscious give and take between employees, managers, and IT, which defines role changes to include new commitments:

• Employees step up and behave responsibly re: do-it-yourself technologies;
• Business Managers learn enough about the technology to understand potential risks; Managers encourage and reward experimentation;
• IT assesses and mitigates technology risk, and works more closely with business employees and activities so they can help with technology platforms.

Incremental innovation and process improvements have always come from those closest to the problems. In these times of The New Normal and the Great Rebalancing, U.S. companies are urged to look for innovation, including what HEROes can bring to their business. When IT departments act consciously and proactively to empower employees, they can orchestrate extraordinary wins for the business.

Contact Software Consortium or call 1-877-850-9393 if you would like to discuss how to leverage our top-level talent to empower your business.

 

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