Productivity and quality are not the only reasons to empower individuals in the new workplace: Speed is the other critical factor in today’s fast-paced business world. A high level of employee self-management is necessary in order to seize market opportunities before they disappear, to beat consistently the competition to the marketplace, and to achieve rapid turn-around rates on products and services. Complicated lines of authority slow everything down. Empowerment has been a big topic among management thinkers throughout the 1990s because it is a business imperative---the key to speed, quality, and productivity.

However, simply telling employees “we want you to treat this project like your own little business” is not enough to create real empowerment (especially if managers don’t really mean it). The situation is further complicated by today’s fluid work environment, in which so many of the most valuable workers are in constant motion. So many employees may be just passing through your organization--working for one- to three-year tours of duty, as independent contractors, as temps or consultants, or serving you on an outsourcing basis. In the JUSTinTIME workplace, organizations need systems to help managers integrate fluid talent quickly and effectively on an ongoing basis without disrupting work-in-progress and the longer-term core-group employees.