What do we mean by knowledge workers?
Our society is changing as we advance into a service and information economy. It is moving from slaves, agricultural workers, labourers, crafters, industrial workers and clerical workers (who are industrial workers working with information) to knowledge workers: professionals who are empowered and trusted to use their own expertise, methods, and tools, to solve a given problem. Thomas Davenport says The primary purpose of their jobs involves the creation, distribution, or application of knowledge. We call the opposite of knowledge work “transactional work” or “production work”: turn this handle until you are dead. Google calls it “toil”. There have always been knowledge workers, but as society advances into the Information Age, the proportion increases. Davenport defines important characteristics we must deal with:
👁️ Knowledge workers like autonomy – don’t impinge on it. Explain what to do, not how to do it.
👁️ Conversely, collaboration and information sharing approaches and tools are essential. They less often work alone compared to transactional workers.
👁️ Specifying the detailed procedures is harder and less valuable – accept unstructured work.
👁️ They need to be interviewed to be understood – be with them, ask them, and review their work.
👁️ They have good reasons for what they do – they are the experts on improving their work.
👁️ Commitment matters – don’t damage it. Knowledge workers must want to do good work, it can’t be forced.
👁️ They value their knowledge as a personal asset and don’t readily share.
You can treat slaves, manual workers, industrial workers, and clerical workers badly, and get higher productivity out of them through such abuse, but you cannot do that to knowledge workers. Knowledge work is invisible: the only way to get good work out of knowledge workers is to create a safe environment where they can flourish, and invite them to be part of the work.
It is not possible to learn a lot about how a knowledge worker works by observation or measurement. They work in their heads. The results of knowledge work are notoriously difficult to quantify. Independently measuring the quality of knowledge work takes about as much effort as doing the work. Nor is an external expert likely to be more expert than the person performing knowledge-work. Knowledge workers know what they are doing better than anyone else except a few masters, and need to be allowed to do it. Knowledge work is a team sport. We cannot unravel the individual contribution: the work is not just production, but also teaching, helping, coaching, assuring, and stimulating others.
The distinction is not black and white between transactional workers and knowledge workers. There will always be transactional processes present as part of any job, and there will be opportunities to apply knowledge. A balance needs to be found between interventionist external process improvement and consultative facilitated knowledge-work improvement – mostly the latter.
Trying to impose standardised systems of execution, measurement, reporting and accountability to non-transactional situations is counterproductive. Allowing people to do knowledge work when appropriate will increase efficiency and effectiveness by getting process out of the way when it is not applicable. Experienced experts don’t like to be told what to do. Their way of doing it is likely to be optimal for them.
As an aside, many employers are discovering that if you treat transactional workers with respect, as thinking adults, (i.e if you drop Taylorism and stop telling), they have a lot to contribute in managing and improving their transactional work: they are latent and neglected knowledge workers too. One soon finds that what is essential treatment for knowledge workers, also gets better results from everyone else.