I’m interested in knowledge work as a subset of knowledge management. Knowledge management implies a command and control model
while knowledge work implies an approach that puts people (knowledge
workers) at its core. On this theme there was an interesting
piece in the Guardian on 13th November by Nick Pandya. It briefly
covered the launch of the new ‘Investors in People’ (IiP) standard
which aims to improve the role managers have in training and
development and also to encourage employers to involve staff in the
corporate decision-making process. Research, conducted recently
amongst 700 senior managers on behalf of Investors in People, shows
that 75% of senior managers believe effective development of employees
will be vital to the future productivity of their organisations, but
that only one in three actually put people development at the top of
their list when faced with competing priorities, such as new
technology, knowledge of competitors and research and development . But
unless I'm missing something here all these so called competing
priorities are actually people issues - it's just that from a
conventional management viewpoint they don't appear to be - at least
not directly.
The new IiP standard is criticised however by John
Seddon of Vanguard Consulting, a consultant who has adapted the
principles behind Toyota’s production system for service organisations.
He says:
“The IiP standard is based on the flawed assumption that
people make a difference [wait there’s more…]. The new standard amounts
to no more than doing the wrong thing righter [sic]. The fact is 95% or
more of performance issues are governed by the system, the way work is
designed and managed – people can’t make a significant contribution if
their system won’t let them.”
This is especially true of knowledge
work. Today’s knowledge workers are frequently stifled by the
restrictive environments in which they have to operate – and no amount
of persuasion will make people share their knowledge when the work
system is so badly flawed. IiP, new or old, essentially fiddles with
the old world view of employees - what we need is a totally new
approach to leveraging the potential of our greatest asset – our
people. The potential rewards are enormous. There is an enormous latent
‘knowledge potential’ in our organisations – if we can look at work in
new ways then we can unleash this potential and make businesses more
productive and help people feel more valued. Hopefully IiP will
eventually see this and then it really will deserve it's title.
ExLink: Investors in People
ExLink: Vanguard Consulting
