employee morale.

Empowerment. Is it a passing quality fad? The rhetoric of motivational speakers? Or a cult-like belief system propagated by buttons, posters and heroic stories of employees who wrestle alligators to retrieve a $10 camera dropped in the swamp by a clumsy tourist?

At the great risk of being labeled a heretic, I submit that empowerment is more overplayed than Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” at a high school prom and about as successful as the rescue attempts on “Gilligan’s Island.” Please don’t misunderstand me, I support the concept of empowerment and really enjoy Led Zeppelin. My argument is not directed toward the potential value of empowerment to an organization, rather to the underpinning rationale and implementation of such a concept.

The most common and widely shared definition of empowerment is to delegate authority to subordinate employees, thus allowing them the power to make decisions that are normally the responsibility of top management. What’s the point of a concept that transfers decision-making authority to line staff? On the surface it appears that organizations empower their employees to resolve customer problems at the point of occurrence, because it strengthens customer loyalty and requires less monetary atonement for the “emotional pain and suffering” customers experience when the problem is played out like a midday soap opera. Also, organizations create empowerment initiatives in an effort to increase employee pride and joy, by allowing them to be involved in the planning of work that affects them.

Increasing customer retention, reducing costly allowances and improving employee satisfaction are all reasonable justifications for employee empowerment. However, it is the unreliability of processes that often necessitates empowerment.

For example, if airlines could improve the inventory management of seats, they wouldn’t need to offer you a free round-trip ticket at 10:30 p.m. on a Friday because they overbooked the plane.

Likewise, if hotels could better predict the arrival/departure patterns of guests and schedule housekeeping services to match such demands, they wouldn’t need to empower their staff to send fruit-bowl amenities because you and your family camped out in the hotel lobby for half-a-day waiting for a room.

Companies need to invest more resources in fixing their processes, instead of creating campaigns and departments directed toward service recovery through empowerment.

Some still emphasize the intrinsic economic benefits of empowering employees to take an active role in running the business. I support such a notion based upon the principle that the collective intellect is greater than that of any one individual. Involving employees in process planning helps facilitate the implementation (behavior change) of newly designed processes and unleashes latent employee creativity.

However, I caution against “Reckless Empowerment” whereby management designates a department as Self-Directed and over the period of a month they become Mis-Directed. Also, I’ve observed other dangerous situations whereby the manager is unable to make a decision without complete consensus. Such an apparently indecisive approach undermines employee confidence in their manager’s ability to steer the ship. The most effective managers take a situational approach. They involve employees whenever possible and at other times make unpopular decisions alone.

For those organizations embarking on the road to empowerment, clarify first the result you’re attempting to achieve. Is it to resolve customer complaints or to involve employees in the design of a more reliable process? In other words, are you giving every employee a fire extinguisher to douse flames — or are you determining how to prevent fires in the first place? By actively involving employees in process improvement, you may well unleash their full creative potential. Then, no one will ever need to wrestle alligators to retrieve your guest’s soggy $10 camera.

P.S. Remember to celebrate the mistakes of your employees’ decisions as they become more involved in running the business. It’s the fuel for learning!

John Timmerman is corporate director of performance management for The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co.