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MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WORKERS

MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WORKERS. CHAPTER 15. What Is a Knowledge Worker?. Embodies experience, innovation, creativity, and transformation of experience into knowledge for leveraging products or services

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MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WORKERS

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  1. MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WORKERS CHAPTER 15

  2. What Is a Knowledge Worker? • Embodies experience, innovation, creativity, and transformation of experience into knowledge for leveraging products or services • Transforms business and personal experience into knowledge through capturing, assessing, applying, sharing, and disseminating it within the organization to solve specific problems or to create value

  3. Personality and Professional Attributes • Holds unique values • Aligns personal and professional growth with corporate vision • Adopts an attitude of collaboration and sharing • Has innovative capacity and a creative mind • Has a clear understanding of the business he is a part • Willing to learn, unlearn, and adopt new ways that result in better ways of doing a job • In command of self-control and self-learning • Willing to grow with the company

  4. Makeup of the Knowledge Worker Transformation process IT Tools Values KNOWLEDGE WORKER Organizational Culture Personal and corporate experience

  5. Core Competencies • Thinking skills—having a vision how the product or the company can be better • Continuous learning—unlearning and relearning in tune with fast-changing conditions • Innovative teams and teamwork—via collaboration, cooperation, and coordination • Innovation and creativity—”dreaming” new ways to advance the firm

  6. Core Competencies (cont’d) • Risk taking and potential success—making joint decisions with calculated risk • Decision action taking—be willing to embrace professional discipline, patience, and determination • Culture of responsibility toward knowledge—loyalty and commitment to one’s manager or leader

  7. Business Roles in the Learning Organization • Learning organization—an organization of people with ingrained commitment to improve their capacity, to create, and to produce what they want to produce • Data and information are givens • Since the 1960s, focus shifted from quantitative to qualitative performance-oriented value-added decision making (See Fig. 15.2)

  8. Nonalgorithmic (heuristic) Nonprogrammable SMARTNESS KNOWLEDGE INFORMATION From Data Processing to Self-Learning—A Trend Algorithmic DATA Programmable From Data Processing to Self-Learning

  9. Work Management Tasks • Managing knowledge workers • Searching out, creating, sharing, and using knowledge regularly • Maintaining work motivation among knowledge workers • Ensuring readiness to work, especially during an emergency

  10. Work Management Tasks (cont’d) • Allocating effort and switching control among tasks • Sharing information and integrating work among knowledge workers • Hiring or recruiting bright, knowledge-seeking individuals • Managing collaboration, coordination, and concurrent activities among knowledge workers

  11. Factors That Limit Knowledge Workers Productivity • Time constraint • Working smarter and harder and accomplishing little • Knowledge workers doing work that the firm did not hire them to do • Work schedule • Motivation against knowledge work productivity

  12. Work Adjustment Model • Ensuring the right match between the vocational needs of knowledge workers and the requirements of their jobs • Achieving and maintaining match with the work environment are basic motives of human work behavior • When the individual achieves correspondence, he or she can continue with future opportunities with the firm

  13. Work Adjustment Model Correspondence (match) Satisfactoriness (satisfactory employee) Abilities Job requirements Promote Transfer Individual Job Fire Retain Vocational needs Reinforcers Job Satisfaction (satisfied employee) TENURE option Correspondence (match) Quit Remain NEW JOB

  14. Smart Leadership Requirements • Assessing core competency of the firm • Response to the firm’s internal shortcomings • Vivid knowledge of the external market and the tricky nature of the competition in the marketplace • Online response to the company’s external environment • Measuring the return on time

  15. Technology and the Knowledge Worker • IT contributes to knowledge capture, information distribution, and information interpretation • Ultimate goal of technology is to serve organizational memory and create a working environment that provides these conditions • Knowledge worker expect to have technical know-how to access, update, and disseminate information from databases and knowledge bases

  16. Knowledge Worker’s Skills • Technical skills and abilities • Professional experience • Soft traits such as a sense of cultural, political, and personal aspects of knowledge in the business • Personal attributes • Communication skills • Educational background and college degree

  17. Role of Ergonomics • Environmental issues • Hardware issues • Knowledge worker-system interface that emphasizes: • Minimum worker effort and memory • Best use of human patterns • Prompt problem notification • Maximum task support

  18. Role of the CKO • Maximize returns on investment in knowledge—people, processes, and technology • Share best practices and reinforce goods of knowledge sharing among employees • Promote company innovations and commercialization of new ideas • Minimize “brain drain” or knowledge loss at all levels of the business

  19. Role of the CKO (cont’d) • Agent of change • Investigator • Linking pin • Listener • Politician

  20. CKO’s Technical Skills • Broad knowledge of business practice and ability to translate technical information at employee level • Making effective use of technical and non-technical elements in KM design • Knowledge of information technology, information systems, and how information is transformed into knowledge

  21. Key CKO Attributes • Teaching and selling • Communicating—speaking the language of the user, mediate, and working with management at all levels • Understanding—e.g., identifying problem areas and determining their impact

  22. Factors Change Leaders Consider • Focus less on problems and more on successes and opportunities • Adopt an attitude that views challenges as opportunities • Work on creating tomorrow’s business instead of hammering on yesterday’s problems

  23. The Soft Side Always Wins • Encourage every team member to create new knowledge in the interest of the project • Help knowledge workers do their jobs • Allow knowledge workers to participate in major company decisions, which can pay off in intrinsic and extrinsic benefits for the company and employees alike • Encourage knowledge workers and employees to learn as they earn a living on a regular basis

  24. Incentives and Motivation • Link incentives to a team approach, where team performance will determine size and nature of the incentive • Use awards for teams as well as individuals for unique contributions • Flextime allows the team to decide on when to work, when to quit, and so forth • Monetary rewards, bonuses, and special prizes can be a hit with the winning team • Publicize success throughout the firm

  25. MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WORKERS CHAPTER 15

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