Excavating The Greatest Value Of Knowledge Workers

Have you discovered the greatest value of knowledge workers?

But how do you know if your knowledge workers are doing their best in pulling the plough? You can't monitor the progress as they monitor the production line workers.

Their work is often invisible and can not be touched: they make use of their professional skills to make judgments. They improvise. They collaborate with other staff inside and outside the organization. They strategise and cultivate customer relations.

How do you know if you are effectively managing it?

Because knowledge work is difficult to measure, some bosses adopt a laissez faire approach: they do not manage knowledge workers at all.

Some use traditional management routines, such as telling them how to complete their work or bringing them into the class level reporting system.

For those professionals who are more proficient in their own field of expertise than their superiors, and require more autonomy, it will only backfire if they cooperate with others in the social network to make the best employees possible.

Davenport believes that people who manage knowledge workers can create more of their subordinates.

But Davenport pointed out that equally important is that leaders of knowledge workers must perform their functions in a new way.

He believes that these changes will form a revolution in management.

From boss to player and coach

He added that managers of knowledge work would not support bureaucracy, but would "abandon them, so that knowledge workers would be free to do their best."

He pointed out that the most important work of the most successful contemporary knowledge work institutions (such as the Manhattan plan and Palo Alto Research Center of Xerox Co) is to protect knowledge workers from bureaucracy.

These executives carry out their missions in many ways, such as ensuring that sufficient funds are constantly injected into appropriate knowledge work projects, explaining to other managers the contents of knowledge work they do not understand, and avoiding unnecessary imposing restrictions on knowledge workers.

Davenport pointed out that many managers find it difficult to find the right balance to supervise knowledge workers and complete their knowledge work side by side.

He acknowledges that this new knowledge work manager (the so-called "team coach") will always feel ambivalent.

If you pay too much attention to the traditional management responsibilities (such as budgeting and planning), you may not reach the real concerns of your customers.

Conversely, too much dedication to knowledge work may not fulfill the management responsibilities satisfactorily.

How to solve this contradiction? Many professional service companies, universities and research institutions are already familiar with this problem, and put forward a solution to be followed.

For example, senior executives in universities will still carry out teaching, research and publishing, so that knowledge work can not be ignored.

But Davenport pointed out that no matter what kind of practice it takes, it must be established at the organizational level.

The law firms may assign certain partners to spend more time managing their employees, so that others can concentrate on serving customers.

This requires consensus at the organizational level, because the time spent by partners based on employee management will be reduced. "

Some companies arrange personnel to rotate in these two jobs.

However, Davenport cautioned that employees should not be separated from their knowledge activities for a long time, especially from customers.

"If we neglect our work for too long, these employees will lose the respect of their colleagues."

He said.

Define the meaning of work

Davenport said that in addition to harnessed the role of coach and coach, another important task of knowledge worker manager is to set up the background of organization for his employees.

"Compared with other employees, knowledge workers are more strongly required to feel that they are contributing to the larger cause and that their organization is carrying out meaningful work."

He said.

As he wrote in Thinking for a Living, these employees "need to understand the background of their work, such as: industry trends, positioning of the company in the industry, major initiatives of the company, specific performance goals, and the relationship between personal performance and these factors."

Equally important, managers need to pay extra attention to assigning projects to employees, which are both personal interest and organizational goals.

Finding the best match takes time and takes care of details.

To allocate and shape tasks for knowledge workers requires more understanding and mutual accommodation than other employees.

When employees feel that they are the masters of the project and see their role in the overall situation, their effectiveness will be greatly improved.

Performance measurement and test

Davenport pointed out that managers of knowledge workers must also assess the performance of the deployment in a new way.

"The criteria for judging them should be output, rather than input, such as hours of work or place of work."

Create quality standards.

Although these standards are subjective, they will be effective if the coverage is wide enough.

For example, in a professional service company, the media and analyst relationship supervisor may use the number of media references and the number of analysts' reports as the indicators of performance measurement.

Then, design reform measures to improve the performance of the indicators and test them.

Davenport believes that managers should not intervene only in order to make knowledge workers more productive. "We must learn something from intervention."

Numerous enterprises initiate change measures, such as pferring knowledge workers from closed offices to small compartments, trying to promote open communication, but do not assess the impact of these measures on performance.

"We are doing experiments, but we haven't learned anything from experiments."

Davenport said.

What is his suggestion? "Planning for change is not for more, but for coincidence."

The implementation measures should be changed one thing at a time.

For example, if you ask your employees to move to a new design office, don't let them try new information technology at the same time.

In addition, consider how to measure the impact of the change measures you take.

"You don't need a doctor of statistics," Davenport said. "But you really have to keep the experiment simple and standard."

In the United States and other leading economies, knowledge intensive enterprises (the highest proportion of knowledge workers) are the fastest growing and most successful organizations.

To manage these employees in a new way, you will have more opportunities to explore the maximum value of these employees and keep the company moving forward.