Peter Drucker on why it is important to reflect on making knowledge workers productive
"The most important contribution of management in the 20th century was to increase manual-worker productivity fifty-fold. The most important contribution of management in the 21st century will be to increase knowledge-worker productivity--hopefully by the same percentage. So far it is abysmally low and in many areas (hospital nurses, for instance, or design engineers in the automobile industry) actually lower than it was 70 years ago. So far, almost no one has addressed it. Yet we know how to increase--and rapidly--the productivity of knowledge workers. The methods, however, are totally different from those that increased the productivity of manual workers."
From: Knowledge-Worker Productivity: The Biggest Challenge, Jan. 1999, California Management Review
Critical tasks along the knowledge worker's value chain
In my last post I have identified the tasks at which software solutions can support information work. In this post I will move on to identifying critical tasks along the value chain of information and knowledge work. As described in the last posts, information work consists of receiving information, processing it into output that is delivered to a certain audience. I have described the value chain of knowledge and information work and have highlighted that value is essentially the insight gained from cognitive knowledge processes. Knowledge workers give advice, answer questions and help reduce uncertainty. The premise of the framework I describe is that a thorough analysis of the value creating activities of a knowledge worker can help identify strategies for individuals and organizations, to deliver more qualified insight in less time.
In my previous posts I have described a frame for analysis; in this post I will add a description of the value adding process behind knowledge work. In order to create insight (i.e. just to relate to the lingo used in the frame before: apply knowledge to deliver output), knowledge workers must:
Five types of software that support information and knowledge work
When looking at the frame for information and knowledge work, it becomes evident that there are the following five information and knowledge activities which can be supported by software tools:
1. Information inflow
2. Information processing
3. Information distribution/communication
4. Information storage, management & display
5. Administration & (time) management
Information enters our perception as input, is processed by knowledge workers and is then again communicated as output to a particular audience. All along, information can be stored in each state, i.e. as incoming, preprocessed or processed information. While our brain is the most straight-forward medium for storing information, there are numerous ways to store information digitally as well.
So the above identified five areas where software tools can support knowledge workers will be subject to more investigation here on the DKW blog. In particular, I find it interesting to look at how internet tools are at their current status able to support these types of processes. My fascination for the internet is based on the internet’s role as the ultimate information medium with seemingly unlimited supply of information from all around the globe. What’s more, the internet has moved from being a read-web to becoming a read-write web, an infrastructure for software to run on and to be accessed 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365days a year. It has become evident that we are moving towards using the internet as the ultimate information machine, a machine which covers all necessary functions of information work and which can be used to boost productivity of individuals.
Opinion: It all starts with personal knowledge repositories and integrated learning management
Michele Martin from the workliteracy blog has put forward some interesting thoughts in her post "Changing Knowledge Worker Attitudes" which I would like to briefly comment on. She observes the increasingly important role of personal learning in an organizational environment:
In a knowledge economy, knowledge and information is power. The more you know, the more you can do with it, the more marketable you are. You can’t AFFORD to let an organization tell you what you should be learning–too many organizations, businesses and nonprofits alike, are so busy struggling for survival that they aren’t even sure what needs to be learned anyway. All of a sudden they look up one day and say “Oh no–we need people who can do X or Y.” Waiting for someone else to tell you what you should learn is a sure ticket to the unemployment line.
Knowledge work, information work and the three success factors behind both
The last post ended with an implicit distinction of knowledge work from information work. There is a difference between the two terms, yet they can be used almost congruently most of the times. The relationship between knowledge work and information work lies in the subtlety of where knowledge “happens”. Knowledge is inherently personal and only our cognitive processes that happen in our brain can be described as knowledge work. The cognitive processes that aim at answering questions can be described as knowledge work in a narrow sense. On the other hand, information-work is not limited to our cognitive processes – the activity rather describes ways of manipulating or handling information in any possible form.
Knowledge work is a value adding process whereby personal knowledge is used to shape the communication of processed input to a certain audience.
What exactly is is valuable? Knowledge work means applying logic and reasoning - that's what's valuable! Knowledge work is performed each time people make decisions. Knowledge workers are people who are employed to make their own decisions based on information they receive and logic/reasoning they apply. Value is derived in finding suitable answers to specific questions, thereby reducing uncertainty.
The result of knowledge work, namely processed inputs is always in the form of information. Knowledge work is thus surrounded by information work
Information as the central resource of knowledge workers
In this post I will highlight the role of information in the input-output process of knowledge work. This is interesting because we are too often confusing information and knowledge. I have explained on other occasions that knowledge is inherently personal and sticks with the individual. On the other hand, information is the basis of all communication. Communication in turn is one major factor that affects our knowledge.
The input-output view of knowledge work aims at highlighting the value adding process of working with information by leveraging personal knowledge. We receive information as input and process it on the basis of our personal knowledge into an adequate format for communicating the results to our audience.
The figure above highlights the flow of information (blue arrow) through our value adding process. Knowledge work is the production of value to information and lies at the core of the process. We receive information from several sources, which shall be looked at in more detail in a later post. We then process information and deliver the results of our knowledge work activities to our audience, again in the form of information. It is important to see at this point that everything that enters or leaves our processing unit, i.e. our brain, is codified into information.
Input-output can be integrated into backbone frame
In the two previous posts I have been pointing out how knowledge work can be viewed as an input-output process and that decisions are made on four layers, namely on the strategic layer, the management layer, the knowledge layer and the output layer.
How do these two frames fit together? The input output framework is suited for an analysis of our production processes, i.e. concrete work we are doing. The backbone framework allows a knowledge worker to identify critical tasks along the way and is especially useful for guiding the processes of learning and reflecting. The two frameworks can be integrated as follows: The knowledge layer on the backbone frame describes the inventory of resources and capabilities that are necessary to process information as described in the input-output frame. Both frames contain an output layer. The output layer in the backbone frame describes the content of output, the major value-added elements while the input output frame specifies the form the output takes. More on this later, just to say as much: the backbone frame can be extended to integrate the input output frame.
A backbone framework: Information work, challenges and the digital advantages
You will find in several earlier posts that I am trying to identify tools and methods for people to become more effective and more efficient in handling information. In information-intensive economies where value in particular depends on the processes of adding value to information, more people than ever before can profit from the insights gained. What I am interested in covers, among others, three areas: First, I am interested in the processes of perception and information or knowledge work per se. Second, I try to find out where the challenges are to become more effective and more efficient at processing information. Third, finally, I try to look at how knowledge workers can leverage a digital environment to produce better results and to reach more people who can profit from them. This post here gives you a brief introduction in how I structure my work.
The backbone of the framework for knowledge workers that I am currently working on consists of four layers: strategy, management, knowledge and output.
Knowledge work as input-output process
One of the main assumptions I make in putting forward the already outlined framework for information or knowledge work is that a knowledge worker uses information as a core resource in the production of output. In any case of knowledge work, an input-output relationship is given, where inputs arrive in the form of information, are then processed by an individual by leveraging accumulated knowledge and the resulting value added output is communicated to a certain audience.
Although viewing the process of knowledge work may appear to be too mechanistic, relating in some way to classical scientific management (Taylor), I believe this frame allows a simple yet not simplistic analysis of our cognitive processes in information-intensive professions. One of the major tasks in the following posts will be on the one hand to gather insights from psychology, neurology, neuropsychology, sociology and economics to first generate a descriptive frame that helps us understand how our brain functions, what critical tasks we perform in the generation of output and to understand more about what we know and who is expecting what kind of output from us before second, moving on to develp a prescriptive frame which will shed light on how we can improve our primary cognitive activities, our actual knowledge-work processes and how we can best design output. Along with these questions we must also ask how we can identify our most valuable audience as well as how we can store and organize inputs, knowledge and output. Stay tuned for more ;)
Wrapup: Strategic personal knowledge management
I left off explaining that analyzing one’s strengths and weaknesses along the value chain of knowledge work can help formulate more successful strategies that ensure a differentiated position in a global, increasingly competitive labour market for knowledge. In this post I will highlight the two most important elements of such a strategy.
A competitive strategy starts at two points:
1. What a market is to a firm is an audience to a knowledge worker
2. What the typical production process is to a firm is the reflective processes that lead to insight for knowledge workers.
An audience for knowledge consists of individuals who express an active or latent demand for insight. Typically, the value of knowledge comes from being able to answer specific questions to reduce uncertainty. The more unique knowledge is, the higher is its potential to answer questions that specific audiences have an interest in answering – usually to reduce uncertainty. Value is enhanced when time plays a critical role. The above said boils down to the following: The better one can answer questions that audiences seek to receive insight about and the stronger the demand for this kind of insight times the degree of urgency that the audience places on reducing uncertainty, the higher the value of the contribution. We need not say at this point, that in efficient markets, this value is expressed in monetary attributes.
The conclusion is this: Any strategy of a knowledge worker starts with the analysis of the audience. Which questions can I answer? How, by delivering insight that results from the processing of information on the basis of my personal knowledge, am I able to reduce uncertainty? Just as firms ask “in which markets should we compete” knowledge workers must ask “which audiences do I serve with insight?”
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