productivity

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

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.

del.icio.us, Google Reader & co.: Productivity tools need integration!

Online productivity tools are in a very primitive state! I will highlight the lack of relevance of current productivity tools for a larger user base and as a result put forward my intention to work on ideas how to take a more integrated approach. The internet offers seemingly unlimited information which can be handled in seemingly unlimited ways. The current tools and services do not integrate, and that’s a real damper for their broader usage. Take del.icio.us and Google Reader – both tools allow you to categorize and store information. What if you want to use the same tags in both services? You cannot seamlessly switch between one information store and another – for each you will have to create your own storage system, be it through tags, categories or any other way. These information stores are dynamically adapting to your information processing habits does not make the issue easier. What’s more, each service offers different features and functionalities, e.g. del.icio.us allows you to categorize tags into groups while Google reader does not. We cannot even expect that products from the same vendor integrate: ban I browse content from Google Notebook and Google Reader in an integrated way? No way! Assume I have a tag “news” in both, the reader and the notebook application. There is no way to browse the tag news and see results from both the reader and the notebook. Making such information available between different services is even further away.

Reading less but more?

Here is an interesting bit by Jim Collins: 

Executives should read fewer management books. I don’t mean that reading is a waste of their time; on the contrary, they should read more. The question is what to read. My own view is that only one book in 20 should be a business book.

That may sound odd coming from an author of three management books, but I’m convinced that you can improve your leadership capabilities by drinking deeply from the well of great books that have been published in a wide variety of disciplines. For one thing, the business and management genres offer precious few superb books with new insights, good writing, and timeless value. I can think of fewer than 10 published in the last 50 years.

To read on: Find the original article here: http://www.jimcollins.com/lib/articles/01_96_a.html

Facing the digital natives

Individuals compete for work in labour markets. Gaining a competitive advantage over other knowledge workers that compete in the labour market is increasingly about how effectlively and efficiently we manage our digital resources. Whether word-files, pdf-files, or more complex data queries - what we produce is increasingly captured, stored and transmitted in digital form.

Looking at how the “young” generation is handling digital resources one becomes aware how much more efficient this generation handles digital information. I have recently watched a documentary on the BBC where schools with distributed learning initiatives were documented. The interviewer asked some of the kids an interesting question: whether they prefer reading traditional books or books on digital devices. The answer of almost any child was straight forward: e-books on digital devices, of course! On these devices, there is much more information, not just one book but rather full libraries. The kids even prefer reading text on a screen rather than print-outs on paper! This is suprprising, because all of the people I have ased that are about my age (in their mid and late 20ies) prefer a printout over a digital screen in order to work with data. This made me realize: we are in for a quite fundamental change!

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