All tagged knowledge work
Knowledge work is challenging enough without throwing in difficult work environments. Consider the nature of the work you have with your colleagues. Is it known with clear handovers (have the handoffs been defined)? Or is there ambiguity and uncertainty that needs to be cleared up? Work in the right way for the scenario you have. And allow for both modes of work - collaborative and serial - in your day.
“When Your Team’s Path Forward Isn’t Clear, Carve It” by Adam Kahane takes the idea of “carving” a solution through its paces. I like this way of framing the approach, even if the blog post doesn’t provide specifics (leave that for his book).
A local paper has a great quote that is takes four times longer to complete two tasks effectively than to do each one individually.
James Slavet has an interesting set of "Five New Management Metrics You Need To Know" on the Forbes technology blog. Rather than look specifically at throughput, he suggests some internal metrics that might be leading indicators.
Inspired by a comment from Robert Lavigne, "Sharing of new found knowledge is the responsibility of all knowledge workers." While many people see KM as all about the "management" and "collection" of knowledge, I have always seen it as about informing as many people as possible about what is going on / what is going through the organizational mind.
Is juggling several tennis balls while telling a joke multitasking? Not according to an interesting discussion from Stowe Boyd.
Kaye Vivian takes a new spin on knowledge silos that highlights an important aspect of how and why they arise in business.
Matt Hodgson has pointed me to the writings of Anne Zelenka and a discussion they've been having about Peter Drucker and the implications of Drucker's thinking on work in a Web2.0 world.
CEO's for Cities have published results of their recent survey on what young knowledge workers look for in cities.
Jim McGee tells us that "Deliverables [are] the fundamental secret to improving knowledge work." I see a connection to Theory of Constraints in Jim's thinking.
Malcolm Ryder has another great essay on KM, this time "How Not To K.O. KM." I can't help but appreciate the way Malcolm synthesizes what has to happen in the world around the worker for "knowledge management" to be successful.
Too Busy Being Unproductive to Learn to Be Productive is another of Dave Pollard's pieces on the topic of finding the right work environment.
At the non-billable hour, guest-writer Ron Baker says "Attorneys Aren't Knowledge Workers," based on comments of his colleague, Dan Morris. This is a great set of thoughts about knowledge work and follows very much on the original idea of knowledge workers by Peter Drucker: companies need knowledge workers more than they need the company.
One of the big ideas for me in a personal approach to knowledge management is that I get to consider what's important for me and how I want to manage and use it. I get to look at my skills and preferences and consider how this fits with where I am in life, so why not apply this to the job search process.
Oren Harari responds to an Economist article with "Knowledge Workers (That's Us!) Need a New Organization." Oren is particularly interested in the juxtaposition between what knowledge workers need and how companies approach it.
Dana Dolan found an interesting quote from Richard Templeton of Texas Instruments, "the biggest thing you do to reward great business people and great technological people is to give them harder problems."
Dave Pollard has been thinking about personal knowledge management for a while. "Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) -- an Update" is a nice summary of where his thinking has come from and where he stands today.
George at elearnspace is "starting to view effective KM and information management processes as being primarily learning processes." Interesting thought.
Jeremy Aarons of Dubbings and Diversions asks a familiar question, Who isn't a knowledge worker? How important is this distinction, I wonder?