Knowledge work does not produce standardized, well-defined outputs. Instead, the value of its outputs depends on how well they match the unique needs of their users. No one is interested in a spreadsheet full of someone else's data; no teacher is likely to value a copy of a paper you've submitted to another class. Understanding what aspects and features of a knowledge work product are most valuable to its intended user is key to focusing efforts on producing the desired deliverable. [The Fundamental Secret to Improving Knowledge Work - ESJ].

Our experience in industrial settings encourages us to look at the output as something that is already well-defined and well-understood. We focus on process changes that will produce the output more quickly or more cost-effectively. When we are doing knowledge work, we do better to focus on the deliverable longer and more mindfully. At a minimum we need to understand the user's definition of quality, the balance between uniqueness and uniformity that will meet this level of quality, and the conditions that must be met to declare the work done. 

I am very pleased that several of the Future of Work corporate members (Forest City Covington, Agilent, Boeing, and IBM) and the Business Community Center^tm concept that Charlie Grantham and I are promoting are mentioned in the December 12 issue of Business Week ("The Easiest Commute of All" - paid subscription required to access), now available online and scheduled to be in print on newsstands everywhere on Monday, December 5.

Now, clearly, in the case of distributed work for an organization, the people involved by definition need to produce something in the real world. But are they truly efficient in doing so? In the case of communities of practice (or the perhaps not-so-aptly-designated activist communities), how many of them have really made something happen? A change in behavior, a change in legislation, a person elected, a product designed and delivered, and so on. How many times have we seen a failure of expected result (ineffectiveness or impact failure) despite all of the buzz? Are interest-communities actually convincing people to do something? Do they need to?

I have observed and participated in online communities of practice, for example, where members spent a lot of time happily, kindly, politely debating ideas, but stumbled when it came time to step forward to take action. The activity of getting to action kept running up against strong roadblocks in the form of differing philosophies, reluctance or fear of leadership, the lack of time or commitment to take action, and so forth. Getting to action was (and is) often hideously painful.

I think one key is the design of a community. When action (and the rules that need to be put in place to facilitate this) is an afterthought, you can't hammer it onto a community that has only vaguely addressed it. When action has to happen, all of the hidden biases, struggles, vanities, egos, weaknesses etc. that have been glossed over during the listening/conversing phase jump into heavy relief. And the result can be disheartening and discouraging.

I am going to be digging into this subject over the coming months. If you have comments, examples, sources, and/or ideas please let me know. If you want to write about it in this space, please propose that to me as a guest author. I think it is a truly important subject that needs more attention as ever more of us work, collaborate and communicate online.

I'm going to reproduce the whole article, with full credit, because it's so important, and fairly brief.

Supreme Court rejects major telecommuting case

The interview is titled "Managing Teleworkers--at home, at work, at Starbucks." It is available online right now by clicking here.

Check it out - it's not the most profound thing we've ever said, but it's nice to see the stuff we all care about getting more recognition in such a great publication.

We're well along in conducting our first round of interviews with interested and experienced thought leaders and leading practitioners. It would be premature to report findings, but I've picked up an interesting pattern that I thought might provoke some useful conversation.

One of the questions we ask each interviewee is, "What resources do you depend on for information about developments in distributed work?"

The answers have been all over the map, from naming specific market research firms and industry analysts to relying on personal networks of friends and colleagues. But what struck me this week is how many people have answered "Google" or "my RSS newsfeed."

Maybe that's not surprising, given today's technology and our increasing reliance on the Net, but I found it interesting that there don't appear to be any definitive or consensus sources (other than Future of Work and FutureTense, of course!)

So, other than Google, where do you go? What websites, blogs, analysts, or professional associations do you find helpful in sorting out trends, data, and conflicting perspectives on the future of work? I'm seriously interested in hearing from you. Where do you go? And Why?

Clearly annoyed by all the attention on small teams, Mena Trott goes on the record to defend big (relatively speaking). I especially enjoyed her comments because she’s in a unique situation — she’s seen Six Apart go from 2 in a bedroom to 80+ spread all over the world. Her perspective is valuable and respectable. And her passion is clear.

...

[Signal vs. Noise]

In fact, we really do believe that nothing short of a reformation in management practice is required to cope with the changes that face virtually every organization and the entire economy these days.

Specifically, our experience suggests that your future business success depends directly on your ability to understand the shifts that are occurring and to redefine your workforce, workplace, technology, and business strategies accordingly.

The new association will focus on developing industry standard productivity measurements, provide professional development programs for industry leaders, and seek to influence state and federal regulations that help or hinder the growth of distributed work.

The full story is available at the Future of Work blog (which is sponsored and maintained by Jim Ware and Charlie Grantham, co-founders and Executive Producers of the Work Design Collaborative).

As far back as Jethro and Moses in Exodus, we've applied hierarchy to bring complexity under control. Many have characterized Jethro as the world's first management consultant. One of the reasons that hierarchy works so well in organizational settings is that is addresses the problem of information overload on managers, where middle managers serve to consolidate and route information through the hierarchy.

However, computers are not people and hierarchy is not the only, or necessarily the best, solution to information management problems. Reed, along with J.H.Salzer and D.D. Clark, wrote a seminal paper in the early days of the design of ARPANET and TCP/IP called  "End-to-End Arguments in System Design" that laid out the reasons that hierarchical solutions were a bad idea in designing a network of the scale and complexity envisioned for the ARPANET. Those design insights were baked into the basic architecture of TCP/IP and are one of the core reasons that the Internet has grown as widely and rapidly as it has. If you hope to understand how the net and network thinking in general will continue to impact the future of work, this had better be one of your starting points. "End-to-End Arguments" is a pretty technical paper, although it is manageable; you might find  "The end of End-to-End?," also by Reed, a better starting point.

More recently, David has been exploring other notions about how markets and technology interact in ways that don't necessarily mesh with our default assumptions. In particular he's done interesting work on why eBay and other internet companies have thrived but handing significant power over to their customers with the notion of Group Forming Networks.

Currently, David is back at MIT at the Media Lab leading a research program on Communications Futures. A good starting point for this work is the program on Viral Communications (pdf) David is doing with Andy Lippman of the Media Lab.

Like other thinkers, the value of looking at what David is up to is twofold. First, the ideas themselves are powerful. Second, watching how someone smart tackles problems can give you insights into how you might tackle other problems more productively.

1. We conduct surveys on the affected group(s) both before implementing a workplace change and 6 months after the change. We ask the survey respondents what tasks they typically perform and how long it takes them to do those tasks. The self-reported improvements are startling for both those that use drop-in or satellite offices and those that work from home:

- Drop-in/satellite office users report an average 26% productivity gain. In this case, the "productivity gain" is how much less time it now takes to accomplish the same task than prior to the workplace change. The number one reason for the ability to do the same task in less time: less distractions than in the primary office. Also, the people report increasing their work time by contributing 62% of the saved commute time back to Sun. So... the people are more productive with their time and they give more time to the company.

- Work from home users report an average 54% productivity gain compared to working in the office. Admittedly, this may be a bit skewed by the fact that a good chunk of the work involved writing reports or documentation, and this type of work is more quickly done when able to concentrate. The number one reason for the ability to do the same task in less time: less distractions than in the primary office. Oh, and the work from homers "gave back" 58% of their saved commute time (while a lesser percentage than the satellite office users, it's actually more time as the home worker commute time was typically far greater to start with).