Team Empowerment: 20 Ways to Get There

Empowerment: How It Works

This case represents a different but all too common form of empowered team, where there were clear parameters to the team's actions.

At a business unit of Telecordia Technologies, a cross-functional team was charged with improving inter-group communication and employee morale. Since cost-containment was an important company priority, the boundary of the team was defined in dollar terms. Any idea that required a “significant” financial expenditure required approval of the management team. This limitation has an unintended salutary effect since it required members to learn how to prepare and present a business case for each financial request.

− Glenn Parker, Cross-Functional Teams,

Jossey-Bass/Wiley, 2003

Quick Team Exercise: ...