Knowledge workers, innovation and the future of work
The world around us is changing ever faster and as such our employee management practices need to follow suit. With self-driving cars, computers that understand what we say and answer our questions, factories turning into places where machines build things and call centres becoming virtual assistants, two critical aspects impacting business are clear: excellence at innovation and adaptation is key and the need for knowledge workers will increasingly replace manual and repetitive cognitive workers.
As Peter Drucker stated:
"The most important contribution of management in the 20th century was the fifty-fold increase in the productivity of the manual worker in manufacturing. The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century is similarly to increase the productivity of knowledge work and the knowledge worker."
The mental picture that characterises an organisation is changing rapidly. Over the past 150 years, the majority of organisations could be described as:
- An extremely efficient machine,
- Each worker performs a specific set of tasks within the machine,
- Workers aren't very aware of other tasks being performed in the machine,
- The nature of the tasks change slowly,
- Managers think up tasks as and when needed, and determine who must do them,
- Workers execute tasks, and
- Managers monitor to ensure workers execute tasks correctly and efficiently.
As manual and repetitive cognitive labour is automated, and the need for knowledge workers increases, the mental picture of an organisation is fast becoming:
- A goal-driven complex adaptive system,
- Workers have no repeating fixed tasks and mostly do new work each day,
- New goals that require new and novel tasks are the order of the day,
- Workers think up what tasks are needed to achieve current goals and are thus responsible for innovation,
- Workers are organised in teams that achieve goals together, therefore workers must continuously align tasks,
- There is no concept of a fixed set of tasks; every day's work is different,
- Managers formulate goals, ensure teams understand goals and support teams in thinking, aligning and executing the tasks needed to achieve goals, and
- Workers, not managers, think up and execute new tasks.
The impact of the above on organisations is wide and deep. The only option that won't work is doing nothing. Paraphrasing Darwin:
"Learning and adapting is not compulsory... neither is survival."
Below are some of the fundamentals about how businesses operate that must change:
- What does it mean to control risk in an organisation where the majority of work is non-standard and non-repeating?
- How does the importance of achieving goals and leading the market compare to the importance of sticking to an agreed and detailed plan?
- How does one budget when the work that must be done is not clearly understood upfront?
- How does one make resourcing decisions in a world where the specific work that must be done cannot be clearly understood?
- How does one attract, measure, reward and retain workers in this uncertain world?
Executives, managers and workers need new skills. Executives must be able to:
- Establish the organisation as a goal-driven, complex, adaptive system,
- Clarify organisational purpose and enable the translation of purpose into goals at the strategic, tactical and execution levels,
- Enable decentralised decision-making coupled with efficient feedback and adaptation through fit-for-purpose organisational structures and processes at a strategic, tactical and execution level, and
- Replace risk management processes based on detailed forward planning in combination with exception management by goal-based planning in combination with fast and efficient adaptation.
Managers must be able to:
- Foster the growth of craft-focused, goal accountable, self-organised teams,
- Enable and support the efficient tactical collaboration of multiple self-organised, craft teams,
- Foster, support, manage and reward lifelong learning as we move from mass manufacturing, repetitive manual labour to mass collaboration of craftsmen, and
- Provide infrastructure that enables efficient, iterative crafting and adaptation of complex products and services, many of which are provided through automation.
Teams and workers must be able to:
- Understand organisational goals at a strategic, tactical and execution level, and how their team goals contribute to tactical and strategic organisational goals,
- Communicate and collaborate efficiently with team members to craft and adapt complex products and services iteratively,
- Jointly design solutions to achieve team-based goals, break down designs together with team members into specific craft-based tasks, self-organise with team members the execution of tasks in the best possible sequence to achieve team goals, and
- Be specialist generalists - hone their craft with deep speciality while still having an understanding of complementary crafts to work with fellow craftsmen effectively.
Moving an organisation from an efficiently running machine paradigm to a goal-driven, complex adaptive system paradigm requires training at executive, management and team levels combined with organisational change management.
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Lionel Bischoff is an entrepreneur, author of Societal Renaissance, speaker, consultant and coach focused on South Africa and the world's journey to the knowledge worker economy and beyond. As MD of EOH Kaizania Academies, he consults to corporates and government on surviving and thriving in our world of constant revolution. His specialties include knowledge worker economy, complex adaptive systems, organisational transformation, digital money, financial services, lean, agile, product development, training and coaching. |
