Is Your Company Ready for HEROes?: Creating a Culture That Fosters Employee-Driven Innovation Using Social Technologies

By: Ted Schadler and Josh Bernoff

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Synopsis: Building a company powered by employee HEROes-Highly Empowered and Resourceful Operatives-is hard. Empowered workers are not enough; they can succeed only in a culture that encourages them and allows them the technical resources they need. In this chapter, authors Josh Bernoff-coauthor of "Groundswell"-and Ted Schadler suggest two questions that can help you determine whether your company's workers demonstrate the qualities that enable HEROes to be effective: Do they feel empowered? And do they act resourcefully? Taken together, these two qualities lead to four possible states of mind for employees in your company: disenfranchised employees who are neither empowered nor resourceful; rogue employees who are resourceful but don't feel empowered; locked-down employees who feel empowered but don't act resourcefully; and HERO employees who feel empowered and act resourcefully. Rich examples from software giant PTC and Sunbelt Rentals demonstrate potential roadblocks to the HEROes-driven, customer-focused innovation you want-and suggest ways you can improve your company's readiness to build a HERO-powered business. This chapter was originally published as Chapter 8 of Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers, and Transform Your Business