About a month ago Jim McGee wrote a piece on the shift from Managing Knowledge Workers to Coaching Knowledge Workers. He points out that in order to connect with an employee we must meet their concerns rather than those of the business or those prescribed by an industrial age approach to Knowledge management.
Suppose, instead, that we turn our attention from the problems of the organization to the problems of the individual knowledge worker. What happens? What problems do we set out to solve and where might this lead us? Our goal is to make it easier for a knowledge worker to create and share unique results. Instead of specifying a standard output to be created and the standardized steps to create that output, we need to start with more modest goals…This approach also leads you to a strategy of coaching knowledge workers toward improving their ability to perform, instead of training them to a set standard of performance. [Jim McGee]
So what is the measure of performance? In response to Jim’s original post, Matt Mower responds with:
The approach I’ve taken towards knowledge management is to treat it as a problem of (and solution to) being effective. This seems to me to be approachable at both levels since one can consider the effectiveness of an organisation in achieving it’s goals and then drill down to the effectiveness of the people in the organisation and show how closely the two are linked.
The win, then, for the individual is in being more effective in what they do. But is that enough? And what else can we offer anyone? In these days nobody believes that being twice as effective leads to getting half the week off. But maybe they do believe that being more effective makes them more valuable and perhaps it helps them to feel better about the job that they do. [Matt Mower]
Firstly, I think Matt is confusing effective with efficient. Effectiveness is a measure of how well somebody meets the standard of output required whereas efficiency is a measure of the resources (primarily time) involved. Regardless, I have never gone to work thinking it will be a great day for me if I am effective or efficient. I normally enjoy a day because I get to do what I want to do. This is where Jim and
Matt’s ideas converge. Both are speaking of individuals rather than companies. I see that as critical because we can only share information between individuals (company to company is between individuals within that company). Also, the shift is to the care of the person involved. Jim speaks of ability to perform and Matt of effectiveness. I think a degree lower than that. What makes an individual want to perform or be effective. This is what you could call a key concern. If you have that then more and more opportunities to assist become available to you.