Replying to LO28643 --
Dear Organlearners,
Fred Nickols <nickols@safe-t.net> writes:
>As some of you know, I've been in pursuit of knowledge
>work and knowledge workers for more than 30 years
>now, specifically, the problem of making knowledge work
>productive. I was set off on my chase by Peter Drucker's
>first serious treatment of the advent of knowledge work in
>a 1968 book titled The Age of Discontinuity.
Greetings dear Fred,
Thank you very much for your thoughtful musings. It will be a great pity
if this topic does not develop into a fully fledged dialogue.
>One key aspect of the shift from manual work to
>knowledge work is a shift in the locus of working, that
>is, a shift from the muscles to the brain. Most of us now
>use our heads more than we do our hands or our backs.
>This shift from overt to covert activity, in turn, signals that
>working has moved out of sight and is no longer accessible
>for the purposes of direct supervision. That, alone, is cause
>for alarm in some circles.
With this alarm i do agree. My own concern is the excessive drive to make
overt what is intrinsically covert -- making that which is actually opaque
"transparent" as some would say. Allow me some examples. Try to make milk
transparent. The result will not be milk anymore. Try to tell what is
intuition. The result will never be close to intuition.
>But, I don't think that that's the core issue when it
>comes to making knowledge work more productive.
>Instead, I think the core issue is the distinction between
>work that consists of prefigured routines and work that
>consists of configured routines. This, distinction, also
>drawn by Drucker, refers, in the first case, to work that
>has been designed for people to do and, in the second
>case, to work that is designed by the people who do it.
You have articulated it fine. It reminds me of the days when i read
Druckers book while also having a bout with an organisation acting to much
conformational. I opted for the non-conformist path. In other words, i
opted for the configured path against the prefigured path. In those day i
paid little attention to the etymology of words. I rather wanted people to
use a consistent terminology and Drucker's terms annoyed me. Today I know
better than to become annoyed.
>I've long sorted so-called "mind work" into three piles:
>information work, knowledge work, and intelligence
>work. Briefly, the three are distinguishable as follows:
I think i understand what you mean and have respect for it. Yet i think
differently, perhaps because i have seen too much how a knowledge worker
is forced to think like the kind of work he/she has to do. In other words,
this side of the world managers use your three classes of knowledge work
tacitly for knowledge workERS. This cause ill effects.
Every person is capable of doing all three your kinds of work, although
not to the same ability and also not equal to another human. When a person
has to do information work in all working hours, that person's ability to
do, say your, intelligence work is denied. This reduction of the person's
mental activities at work has a serious effect on that person's mental
health.
As I see it, every knowledge worker has to meander between the digestive
and bifurcative assymptotes of learning to remain a sound worker. The
learning comes into the picture otherwise the worker's knowledge becomes
stagnated. It is possible to prefigure (conform) the digestive, but not
the bifurcative. But enough of this highly complex stuff.
>At one end of this continuum of mind work, the
>information work end, self management is not only
>not necessary, it is quite probably undesirable and
>likely to prove costly and counter-productive.
I appreciate what you write and especially the phrase "continuum of mind
work". Sometimes i wonder whether it is wise trying to categorise this
"continuum of mind work". I want to tell a story why.
There is a certain large corporation here in South Africa which has
branches all over the country. One of its branches is at a sea port while
its head office is inland. A certain person had to send to head office
every Friday a report of the weather and sea conditions at that port. This
is an example of your information work. He did it for several years. Then
he retired.
The new worker did it for a couple of months, but then began to wonder why
because he got no feedback from head office. He also began to wonder why
it should be on Fridays. He began to make enquiries, first locally at that
branch. Nobody could tell why. This is an example of your knowledge work.
Then he made equiries at the head office. But head office replied that he
must just keep on doing it. Of what kind of work this is, I would not know
;-)
One day he began to clean up and reorganise the office to his liking. He
came upon an old memo written by the someone of the executive team at head
office. That person has since then also retired. In the memo it was
requested that the weather and sea conditions should be sent in each
Friday because this senior manager was keen on fishing. He wanted to come
down to the port for a fishing weekend and wanted it not to be fouled up
by the weather. So the new worker made a copy of that memo and sent it in
with the report the next Friday. This is an example of your intelligence
work. A couple of days later he got a memo telling to stop sending in the
reports.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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