knowledge workers: turning hedgehogs into foxes

Posted on August 20, 2011 by lawrence serewicz

The future of work is that knowledge workers will be driving productivity. The connections they make and can see are important. However, the issue for all management is that hiring practice often solving on the immediate problem and not the wider issue of knowledge management or knowledge productivity.

By that I mean, the future will be to hire more foxes or make more of the hedgehogs into foxes. Foxes know many things, while hedgehogs know one thing. Firms, perhaps local government more than most, may often hire a hedgehog, to deal with the problems of the moment, when the future of work requires hiring foxes. The need will be to find ways of increasing productivity of these workers by helping them to learn something new. However, this is not simply retraining or continuous development. Instead, it is the need to be able to unlearn to learn.

Therein lies a difficulty because the culture of firms, and local government, may be that such learning is not the norm. This is not to say they oppose it, but rather to say that the past determines their future. They face the cost of path dependency in which their past decisions brought them to the moment they face now. The question is whether the leadership and the staff themselves can see the need for this development. See the book by Cathy N. Davidson http://amzn.to/nS7N9F

This was discussed at http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/08/19/now-you-see-it-cathy-davidson/

The key challenge, though is to unlearn to learn. Can an organisation that has succeeded or delivered in the past, with relative success, unlearn what made it successful and learn what to do differently? In a sense this is simply competitive adaptiveness, but in another sense it is something more. The reason it is different is that the future of work is the knowledge worker and he or she is focused on individual tasks within a network. In that network, the focus has to be on what the individual can bring to the network. By contrast, in the current understanding of the firm, except for small areas, the firm is bigger than the individual worker. The balance, though, is shifting because of knowledge work.

Where the future success lies is for organisations to seize that initiative and find ways to get individuals more productive and efficient. However, some business, for example government, are inefficient by design. (This is not swipe at government, but a comment on its role and function because it has to cover areas that business or voluntary sectors cannot cover.) In those areas, they will have to adapt to increase their ability to educate and retrain the hedgehogs into foxes because their services are being changed in ways that require more foxes than hedgehogs.

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Productivity seminars: social media efficiency gains?

Posted on August 19, 2011 by lawrence serewicz

We all face situations where we do not get the most out of our IT equipment. Staff who are unaware of a machine’s full options may end up using powerful PCs as typewriters.

How do you make sure you, your team, and your organisation are maximizing the productivity potential of the IT systems you use? Is there a way to leverage individual expertise, within an organisation, across the organisation? Does Yammer or a similar social media tool offer a knowledge productivity gain? In particular, how do you share knowledge about tips and techniques with staff some of whom may be unaware they need it.? For example, staff may be unaware that they can password protect their printing so if they send it to common printer it will only print when they put in their password.

An enduring complaint in the modern office is “too many emails/ How do I manage my emails?” What this suggests, if staff are using Outlook, is that they are unaware of the Outlook functionality that allows them to set rules to filter their emails or redirect them based upon the subject line or author.

How do we scale up individual knowledge like the example above to staff who want to know about it but do not know who or how to ask for it.

The productivity gains here are different from, but related to, the productivity gains offered by improved management techniques. The knox d’arcy report on local government management, while amazingly prescient and well observed, focused on management.

http://www.knoxdarcy.com/market-analysis

My focus here is on the emerging knowledge worker, perhaps within local government, and how organisations improve their productivity. This not simply publishing more information, but finding a way to create a coherent and consistent push-pull. For example performance management monitors performance and changes inputs to get better outputs. How do we do that on an individual level within a large organisation?

At a basic level, you can sit someone in front of a computer and let him or her work it out without any guidance. Highly inefficient, but likely happens more than we would care to admit.

Second, you can give them the manual or tell them where the manuals are located. They then have to teach themselves and know what they are looking for in terms of a problem or a solution. [Quick question: How many people know what kerning is and how to set it on the Microsoft word documents?]

Third, one can set up what Microsoft offers with its Outlook product an ongoing RSS within outlook that sets out hints and tips to help users to use the products capacity. However, what do you do if those topics do not cover what you need?

Fourth, ask a colleague. Most people, in a situation where they need help, ask a colleague (hopefully someone more knowledgeable about the topic) to find a solution. However, this is inefficient because either they do not know or, if they have a solution, it is usually sub-optimal.  However most staff seem to want to learn from their colleagues.

http://davepress.net/2011/07/10/social-knowledge-and-learning-at-bt/

Fifth, one can go to a “training course” where they go through a curriculum (i.e. learn the theory of fishing or even some fishing techniques) without addressing ways in which the specific product, how do I get this hook to work better, or is this the best net for catching small mouth bass?  Are they learning how to add value to their work? Moreover, are they learning how to modify their work to get the most out of the machine. In addition, if the team need the information, this relies upon the one officer on the training course being able to train their colleagues.

So what are some of the solutions you use? Do you have an agreed approach within your organisation for getting the most out of your IT, and other equipment and making staff more productive.

Social media may offer a solution.  Yammer and other services allow forums where staff can ask questions of in-house expert users who can show them, on-line or in person, how to get the most out of their systems (or at least address some of the issues you have). . For example, you can use Twitter as a personal learning network (PLN)

Do you encourage staff to go to outside forums? However, will that help teams who have the same work? One person may have the knowledgeable in the team, but they may not be able to train the others. How do they get non-technical help in improving their productivity as a knowledge worker? By that I mean, I may have a technical problem, and the IT helpdesk can help me with that problem, but how do I get help with increasing the productivity of myself my team through the equipment we have?

For example, your service provider may train people in your organisation to operate the system and thereby support ongoing work. Did they spend time working through, in an interactive development session, how to get the equipment working best for them in what they need?

Is there a future opportunity to create micro blogsites where staff can get such hybrid technical and productivity knowledge questions asked and answered? The challenge is to find the right balance of push and pull. How much information do you make available to push and how much do you make available to pull? In the examples, I cited above, there is a strong pull factor, but this presupposes someone who is aware of their reduced capacity and an incentive and time to improve it. At the same time, there has to be resources to draw that from, which are in abundance on the web.

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