The value of written procedures. Should they be bound by the letter of the procedure or should they be empowered to use their own judgement?

Empowerment derives from knowledge and experience.
There is a tremendous value to written procedures.
I have 100's of hours reviewing and revising them.
They become the foundation for everything that follows.
If there were none, then on what do you have to base your decision? The second place empowerment comes from is the level of experience the individual has, the rookie? Relies heavily upon written protocols as it should be, more seasoned staff member can identify that they have encountered this type of situation before or at least something similar.
At this point, they know this issue falls into the “grey” area.
This is where procedures plus their experience engages and should lead to solid judgments.
However, it is, and I cannot emphasis enough, incumbent upon supervisors/managers to provide the training that will give staff the confidence to make a good decision.
There is no substitute for good judgment.
Long story short, I do agree with you, competent staff must be empowered.

The procedures are written to standardise the conduct. Standardising reduces the variations that is a waste. So procedure do add value in that perspective. The other main advantage of a procedure is that it enables the work to be carried out by team members whose skills levels are much less than the one writing those procedures. 

 

However, if the users of procedures are skilled enough to make judgements, the possible solution is to make the procedure a little higher level documents providing the required flexibility for the users to exercise the judgement. In such cases over prescribing procedure could produce negative results.

 

The other factor that must be kept in mind is to frequently review the applicability and scope of the procedures to ensure that they are still relevant and applicable.