I agree that you need sudo. This way you don't need to switch user, you can give that user permissions to run xxx program with yz switches. The command then turns into

sudo chmod 777 /some/directory

This prevents that user from running it with any other perms and allows you to keep the root password sacred.

Here it is from the software porting place:
sudo-1.6.8p12

You'll need to edit the config file.

Enjoy!