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Elizabeth Albrycht is a 16-year veteran of high technology public relations practice and co-founder of the New Communications Forum, a conference series designed to bring journalists and marketing and PR professionals together to learn how to use participatory communications tools. She is a founding advisory board member and is the chair of the research committee for the Society for New Communications Research: . Elizabeth has authored articles on blogging, RSS and other new tools for a variety of industry publications, and has presented teleseminars and in-person seminars on new communications tools for PRSA and Ragan Communications: . She often speaks about social media in both the US and Europe, and blogs about PR and corporate communications at CorporatePR.

Dave Desforges began piloting "Work From Home" solutions over 3 years ago. His role required identifying additional candidate requirements and necessary remote work practices for both employees and managers at Sun Microsystems. His current work encompasses blending appropriate technology, organizational practices, and workplace environments to support mobile and distributed teams.

Jim McGee is currently a Director at Huron Consulting Group. He has spent much of the last 30 years working to understand, design, and apply information and technology innovations in organizations. Before Huron, Jim taught at the Kellogg School and was one of the founding partners of DiamondCluster International. With Larry Prusak, he was the co-author of Managing Information Strategically (Wiley, 1993). Jim has both an MBA and a doctorate in Information Technology, Organization, and Strategy from the Harvard Business School.

Regina Miller has more than 18 years of experience in Organization Development, Human Resources, Leadership Development and International Operations. Regina recently launched a global consultancy called The Seventh Suite which assists growing companies bolster their competitive edge via aligned strategy and progressive people practices. Her last corporate job was as the VP HR/OD for Oskar (Vodafone) which has been dubbed “one of the fastest growing mobile operators in Eastern Europe.” More info here.

Giovanni Rodriguez - Through a combination of luck and persistence, Giovanni has worked in the company of some of the most interesting and colorful leaders in several worlds: the law, theater, and technology. Today, he is a principal at Eastwick Communications, a Silicon Valley PR agency, where he advises both emerging companies and market leaders on executive leadership, public speaking, marketing strategy and media relations. He has worked for, consulted and advised numerous businesses and organizations including HP, Stanford University, Fujitsu Computer Systems, Cadence Design Systems, VMware, the American Arbitration Association, and the Unified Court System of New York. He is a graduate of Princeton University (Religion and Anthropology), and he has done graduate course work at the Columbia School of Journalism and N.Y.U.

Jim Ware is a cofounder of the Work Design Collaborative and the Future of Work program. He has over 30 years experience in research, executive education, consulting, and management, including five years on the faculty of the Harvard Business School. He was the lead author of The Search for Digital Excellence, (McGraw-Hill, 1998), and holds Ph.D., M.A., and B.Sc. degrees from Cornell University and an MBA (With Distinction) from the Harvard Business School.

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July 13, 2005

Managing knowledge vs managing knowledge work

Posted by Jim McGee

There is a moment in the movie "Ray" that highlights the challenge and potential of managing knowledge work and knowledge workers well. Ray Charles is in the studio auditioning for Ahmet Ertegun, his producer-to-be at Atlantic Records. Ray has been demonstrating his craft in his ability to mimic the styles of other singers and Ahmet challenges him to use his own voice. The result is Ray's first hit single "Mess Around."

This pivot point encapsulates key lessons about knowledge work, why it is hard to do, why it is hard to manage, why much of our management thinking is misleading, and what we might do instead.

I've been framing this as the notion that knowledge work has more in common with craft work than with industrial work practices. Whether you are now managing yourself or whether you manage other knowledge workers, what you manage is changing and much of what we think of as good management practice becomes obsolete at best and dangerously counterproductive at worst.

There's an interesting argument by Gerry McGovern making the blog rounds recently. He asserts that knowledge workers don't exist in the same way that we think of farm or factory workers. He argues that to be a knowledge worker is to also be a knowledge manager and goes on to say that:

In a knowledge organization, the role of management changes. Management becomes less about setting and policing rules for workers and more about establishing strategy, setting goals, showing leadership, and measuring results.

Knowledge management is less about managing people and more about giving them the right goals, the right motivation, and the right tools, and clearly articulating how success or failure will be measured. [Gerry McGovern - New Thinking]

The fatal flaw in most work on knowledge management to date has been focusing on 'knowledge' as something analogous to inventory before we've ever looked at what distinguishes knowledge work from other kinds of work. That moment in "Ray" highlights the essential difference. What makes "Mess Around" valuable is that it is unique; it is not an imitation of anything else. The fact that Ray Charles and Atlantic Records make their money from mass-producing copies of that unique creation distracts us from the knowledge work and knowledge management lesson to be learned. When we are thinking about knowledge work, we need to be focused on the uniqueness not the uniformity. Confusing knowledge with widgets obscures this essential point.

If art is about the ability to create unique pieces of work, craft is about the ability to create a series of those works for paying customers. Management in the industrial world has been about taking creation and mass producing and distributing copies of that creation as far and wide as possible. It treats creation as magic and makes no effort to manage it. Managing knowledge work is about working the boundary between craft and production and making good choices about which side of the boundary to emphasize when.

When we are on the craft side of the boundary, we are in the realm McGovern is calling attention to. Much of the management task then is about creating the conditions and environment for the craft to be performed more reliably and more predictably. Because there is art and craft involved, the creator of the work must be engaged in the management process, although it can be shared with others who understand the craft/creative process. This is not a realm friendly to the prototypical operating manager who has flourished in industrial settings.

Comments (4) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: Management Practices

COMMENTS

1. Jim Ware on July 15, 2005 4:41 PM writes...

Jim, this is a very thoughtful and stimulating set of ideas. Nice work.

I agree with you - and, I think, Gerry McGovern - that knowledge work can't be "managed" in the traditional sense. Industrial tasks - production, to be specific - require uniformity, efficiency, and a focus on output goals like quantity and quality.

And there's certainly some of that with knowledge work too - especially if you are a call center rep or a tech support person. You have to meet certain output goals (which can sometimes be difficult if the problem you are solving is complex and requires more time than the "standards' allow you). And for that kind of knowledge work, more traditional management makes sense.

But for the really creative stuff, traditional management is a real hindrance and inhibitor. How can you "order" someone to produce a creative new product design or marketing slogan by 11 AM tomorrow? Yet at the same time I also believe that creativity can suffer if there is a complete lack of pressure for output.

But to return to your main theme: the "job" of a knowledge "manager" is indeed to create the conditions that foster knowledge creation - and not just on a one-time basis, but on a long-term, ongoing basis as well.

And what are those conditions? Well, I submit that while we can probably agree on some general conditions, the fact is that truly creative people have very unique work styles, habits, needs, and desires. So the core of the management task is to understand the unique needs of individual knowledge workers (whether that worker is yourself, or a whole group of folks working for you), and then to create just the right amount of "creative tension" for each one of them.

Think about managers of skilled athletes or musicians - there may appear to outsiders to be a lot of "coddling" involved, but that may just be what is needed to coax the best out of each performer.

At the same time, there is also much genuine discipline buried within a lot of creative work. Musicians, for example, practice and practice, and practice - in order to be good enough to "let go" and be spontaneous and in the moment. And actors, who often have to be creative on the spot, are only good at it because of all the discipline and very detailed training that is built into their craft (and it really is a craft - that's a great concept to throw in this mix).

The challenge we face in organizational settings is that there is a general expectation that each worker will be treated "equally" and "fairly" relative to everyone else.

But if those individuals are actually producing knowledge with differing value, then treating all of them alike isn't fair either.

(Sigh) I think I am convincing myself that managing knowledge work, and workers, is an almost imposssible - and generally thankless - task. Which is maybe why I am a real believer in self-management for knowledge workers, and maybe why so many of us knowledge worker types find life inside large, bureaucratic organizations so stifling and uncomfortable.

Anyway, thanks again Jim for stimulating this tired brain on a Friday afternoon!

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2. Jim McGee on July 16, 2005 11:19 AM writes...

Jim,

An equally provocative set of comments on your part. I have been and continue to struggle with what it means to manage knowledge work.

One of my favorite definitions of the job of manager came from Howie Stevenson in a doctoral reading seminar 15 years ago. In his view, the fundamental job of a manager was to identify and remove obstacles to getting work done by the manager's staff. That doesn't provide much in the way of a checklist, but it's a perspective I've tried to maintain.

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3. pqmya@yahoo.com on May 28, 2006 5:12 AM writes...

This site is very useful. Keep up this excellent work - very good.

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4. Hillary on September 12, 2006 8:19 PM writes...

http://qualification-social-worker.blogspot.com

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