Library clips

On a post from a while back Andrew Gent spoke about the different types of knowledge workers: generators, brokers, consumers. And for the KM strategy to reflect these groups, rather than one-size-fits all. Peer-to Peer-tools for knowledge generators and the assumption of best practices for consumers…Andrew says:

Where’s there to go next when you have squeezed all the efficiencies you can out of a process…all that’s left is to be able to sell these skill-based processes as a commodity.

Thus KM being about best practices, rather than supporting knowledge generators.

Andrew highlights the problem here:

And then gives an example:

NOTE: Another example is the knowledge economy of the World of Warcraft.

In this black and white view KM supports strategy (and for any social content to be aligned to strategy), rather than the needs of employees…then you wonder why no-one is motivated to share anything.

Andrew warns to not fall for the lure of strategic alignment:

I’m not going to get into "best practices" in this post, but I really like how Andrew puts KM into two camps, the new camp being about support, sense-making (also innovation and learning). This is the place where sharing happens due to enabling intrinsic motivation, and a focus on social capital…basically a distributed way for people to source help and connect with others…making the workers life more empowering, less frustrated…and more engaging.

Bas Reus ponders this:

Emergent practices

And speaking of emergent practices, lessons applied and the importance of context and conversation, have a read of Nancy Dixon’s post on the eradication of small pox.

Agents in the field applying what they learn daily to what needs to be contextually practiced rather than the top-down generic practice, is a great example of perpetually evolving practice. We need to be able to adapt to the complexities of our situation. If this was done today, the agents could report their experiences in the field using blog posts and comments, and the perpetually changing practice can be updated in the wiki…very agile.

The knowledge worker and routine jobs

A while back the Anecdote blog mentioned that we could do without the term knowledge worker, as even routine jobs require some element of dealing with context.

I agree. Yes a brain surgeon may have to improvise a whole lot more, and use their head a whole lot more, and possess lots of knowledge, way more than a janitor…but this doesn’t mean the janitor is a robot.

This thread has picked up again. A post by Joe McKendrick headed me over to a post on the Big Shift blog, called Are All Employees Knowledge Workers?

The authors are saying something similar to the Anecdote blog post on the false dichotomy that the term knowledge worker creates:

The authors say that routine jobs still require thinking:

We are all knowledge workers…we think and improvise, use heuristics, rules of thumb, and workarounds to get things done…humans are great at self-organising themselves around exceptions to processes, and improvising where processes don’t exist.

The example of the Janitor

Even a janitor’s routine work needs some improvising, see the article Turning a Janitor into a Knowledge Worker.

This article is about micro-managing vs autonomy and leadership…giving the worker some decision-making responsibility as they know their context and local conditions best in order to make an effective and timely decision. Not only does it make for a more agile and responsive organisation, but the worker is more engaged as they have impact on how things are done…they are not just a robot.

In this fictional example the routine work of the janitor is not adapting to mess that is being generated of late due to some new work that is being carried out in different frequencies and parts of the building. The CEO tells the supervisor to cut cost costs and improve quality…the building is too dirty.

The supervisor does a clever thing and gives the janitor some decision-making responsibility…to basically give priority to dirty areas on any given day. As a result the CEO is happy because there are less complaints, and it’s due to the janitor following his own practice.

The supervisor also included the janitor in meetings with sales reps. Where the janitor communicated some issues like wax build up in corners and long waits for the floor to dry between cleaning and waxing, which the sales rep could remedy with different products.

In this story we see that top-down rules and micro-managing are just not adaptive enough, and that localised decision-making and improvisation not only improve agility, but also engagement.

The Janitor and social interactions

Barry Schwartz in his TED presentation refers to Hospital Janitors. It really is a brilliant talk.

Below are some of my transcripts, some bits are verbatim:

Janitors job duties involves no social interaction

Yet when a psychologists interviewed Janitors, they were surprised to hear these contrasting anecdotes:

• Mike stopped mopping the floor as Mr Jones was out of his bed getting exercise, building strength walking up and down the hall
• Charlene ignored supervisor orders and didn’t vacuum the visitor lounge due to family members taking a nap
• Luke washed the floor in a comatose young mans room twice because the mans father who had been keeping a vigil for 6 months didn’t see Luke do it the first time, and his father was angry

The discretion and autonomy of local decision-making of the janitors role improves the quality of patient care.

These janitors think these human interactions (kindness, care, empathy) are an essential part of the job, yet their job description does not reflect practice (reality).

These janitors have the moral will to do right by others, and moral skill to figure out what doing right means.

A wise person knows when and how to make the exception to every rule…janitors knew when to ignore their job duties in the service of others.

Janitors say is takes lots of experience to learn the human interaction part of their job. Experience and time spent with people is important, learning to improvise, try new things, occasionally fail and learn.

I’m going to revisit this presentation on a future post about excessive rules, best practices and incentives which decrease the quality of moral skill.

More

Michelle Martin reviews Matthew Crawford’s book, which poses whether white collar works get to be creative and think as much as they think they do:

Mark Gould also posts about Matthew Crawford’s work, which gets into the difference between manuals and practice. The context of situations call for hunches, heuristics rather than rules.

This post was meant to be about knowledge workers, but as you can see it gets into territories such as leadership, autonomy, decision-making, engagement, best practice, context…

Mark Gould’s perspective that I’m sure we all agree with:

Let’s finish off with this quote by Marshall Goldsmith that perhaps encapsulates this whole thing: