Knowledge workers and managing knowledge

Office World News, Jun 1999 by Davidson, Keith T

The knowledge worker is the most powerful sociological and economic factor arising from the information revolution.

The most powerful sociological and economic notion arising from the information revolution is not the computer or the Internet. It's the emergence of the knowledge worker and its implications for organizations.

Today, the knowledge worker, a term first coined by modern management thinker Peter Drucker, is the most populous and significant portion of the workforce in the world.

Knowledge work, or jobs which typically require some schooling, accounts for one-third to one-half of all employment and is rapidly replacing industrial and agricultural work as the largest portion of economic output in developed countries.

Knowledge work is projected to constitute more than 80 percent of the world's workforce by 2010. This trend is evident in most nations of the world. The dramatic growth and attention placed on the knowledge worker and managing knowledge has interesting implications for those in the office solutions and office systems industry.

Knowledge work, as it is defined, is work that requires schooling, usually formal schooling. You do not learn knowledge work effectively by trial and error or experimentation; it requires an authority or a teacher. For example, even a file clerk is a knowledge worker because he can't learn the alphabet intuitively, it must be taught in school. Further, knowledge work is characterized by rapid change and broad applicability, in contrast to skill work. Skill work is learned by practice in an apprentice environment and changes slowly and is applicable to very specific tasks.

The knowledge worker

Since knowledge is the most important factor of production in the modern organization, a dramatic redistribution of power is taking place-one that will forever alter the relationship between employers and their knowledge workers.

The employer and employee relationship is changing because the employer cannot own knowledge, unlike data or information; it is the property of the employee. This new relationship results in the redistribution of power.

Empowerment, which has been presented in many circles as a management innovation, is simply a recognition of this powerful fact of life. If the employees own and maintain the most important productive assetknowledge-they must be empowered to use it or the organization will not function.

Knowledge workers are "rented" for their time and purpose, so reengineering and downsizing have become ongoing corporate practices, not merely occasional corporate muscle toning. Knowledge workers are regarded as a portable and temporary corporate resource, meaning it's typical for the knowledge worker to "carry" his knowledge resources from company to company.

Knowledge work changes at a dramatic pace. One estimate is that 25 percent of all knowledge work is obsolete every three to five years. Certainly in high-technology fields such as computer science and telecommunications, the rate accelerates.

Office systems professionals and offices solutions providers have a multi-level stake in the knowledge revolution. First, you are a knowledge worker. You must accept the fact that careers in your industry will be fraught with change and that preparing to deal with change and managing its effects are requirements of your work. You will be faced with increasing uncertainty on the job and will need to recommit to a continuous program of learning and education to maintain an "edge" with regards to the latest technologies, applications and products.

A knowledge re-education

Learning is not an option; it's a requisite. It is important to restore your expertise base constantly. Refurbishing and replacing ten percent of what you know every year seems a reasonable goal to keep pace with the rate of change that's happening. A program of constant personal re-education should dominate your commitment to your job and your relationship with your employer.

Today, the emergence of the knowledge worker has required that organizations re-design their management approach-hence, managing knowledge. This view of knowledge suggests that managing people is just as critical as managing office systems and solutions. Popular management trends have sprung up from the corporate need to manage knowledge-based tasks. Some management trends are even making knowledge independent of the knowledge worker by focusing on systems. But in the future, managing knowledge will increasingly determine an organization's success.

More and more, knowledge-based organizations have new priorities: resilience rather than stability, autonomy rather than control, focus on core competence rather than broadly based excellence, and employees with portfolios of skills. These new priorities suggest new approaches for office systems professionals and office solution providers to manage knowledge work: facilitating progress rather than describing tasks, relationship building rather than structure building, and nurturing growth and evolution rather than managing change. The traditional management tasks of planning, organizing, and controlling will be supplanted with skills in listening, communicating, and facilitating.