Exploring Empowerment Through a Framegame

This article explores empowerment as a performance technology intervention in general, and as a decision making strategy in particular. Typical managers are apprehensive that empowerment will force them to relinquish their decision making authority. The use of a framegame provides a high touch approach to fair, open, and interactive decision making. This article describes a framegame called Elephant Grope for facilitating cross–group decision making. The requirements and rules for playing Elephant Grope are discussed in detail. Sample applications for conducting Elephant Grope in various organizational settings to achieve various performance outcomes are described. Suitable follow–up activities are suggested to enhance both the process and the product of decision making.