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Managing "knowledge workers" Brain teasing by Tom Davenport IN THE early industrial age, men in white coats would walk around factories with watches and clipboards measuring the time it took workers to perform specific tasks. These “time-and-motion” experts set out to measure labour productivity, and thence to improve it. The sort of jobs they were measuring, however, no longer enjoy such a premium in the places where they measured them: less than 10% of today's jobs in America are in manufacturing, and less than 15% of those in Britain. Workers of the western world are now employed largely in service industries, where they are paid for their brain rather than their brawn. Many of them can be called “knowledge workers”—between a quarter and a half, estimates Thomas Davenport, who is a long-time observer of the species. Knowledge workers, he says, are those whose “primary tasks involve the manipulation of knowledge and information.” These people are the creators of wealth in western economies today, yet scarcely anybody is measuring their output and seeking ways to improve it. Somebody should, Mr Davenport argues. Finding ways to improve the productivity of knowledge workers, he says, is “one of the most important economic issues of our time”. He is not the first to say this. Peter Drucker, who invented the term “knowledge worker” more than 35 years ago, said then that “management's new role” is to “make knowledge more productive”. Little has happened in the intervening time, partly because this is not an easy task. There are no time-and-motion studies that can measure how many thoughts go through knowledge workers' heads or the value of their creative output. Does that therefore mean that companies must (as most of them have until now) leave these valuable assets entirely to their own devices, to work as each of them sees fit while they, their employers, merely stand and wait? Mr Davenport shows that the answer to this question does not have to be yes. Some companies have tried to make their knowledge workers more productive. Hewlett-Packard, for instance, was one of the first to create a sort of electronic “yellow pages” directory of experts inside the company, together with their expertise. Research has found that the computer programmers with the biggest offices are the most productive, and that e-mail is a better medium for complex negotiations than instant messaging. By looking at the ways in which different workers use knowledge, Mr Davenport begins to build a framework within which companies can start thinking about how to make the process more productive. It is not yet—and may never be—a very tidy framework, and it ranges from the best technologies that gather and disseminate information which knowledge workers need, to the sort of workspace best suited to people who are very mobile and who, by definition, need to concentrate a lot. But it is a bold attempt to address a pressing issue. What a pity that the author felt the need to conform with formulaic management books and end each chapter with a “summary” and a number of blobbed “recommendations”. Knowledge workers don't like being patronised; Mr Davenport should know that. Tom Davenport is professor and director of research, Babson Executive Education, Babson College. Copyright Tom Davenport. All Rights Reserved. END | |||||||||
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