It's
now almost five decades since Peter Drucker discussed the concept of the
knowledge worker in his 1966 book The Effective Executive, as he emphasised the growing importance of the “team”,
and encouraged recognition of the value of employees. The term was created as
an antonym of the "manual worker", as a way to describe those people
within the organisation whose value is in the use of their intelligence, rather
than their dexterity or ability to follow orders. In today's society, this
distinction sits rather uncomfortably in itself (and I have cringed while
trying to explain it). More generously, you might interpret it as those
individuals whose roles involve working with information, analysing and
interpreting it, sharing it and manipulating it (whether honestly or
dishonestly) so that it has the greatest value to the organisation (or the
individual). OK, so I guess I ran out of generosity at the end there.
In the new world,
however, where top-down, hierarchical organisation structures are quickly
losing their cachet in idealistic business strategies in favour of more open,
collaborative approaches, the concept of the "knowledge worker" seems
defunct. If your organisation's culture encourages everyone to have a voice, to
share their views, experiences, concerns and opinions in order to create a
unified, transparent and flattened structure, who isn't a knowledge worker? With social
collaboration tools providing a platform for discussions, cross-department
communication, and broad and open access to information throughout an
organisation, then a knowledge worker might include:
- Anyone who participates in a
process and therefore might have an opinion to offer in terms of how that
process could be improved;
- Anyone who has information
that might be useful to someone else, somewhere in the organisation;
- Anyone who has an opinion -
from any perspective - on company policies, news, strategy etc.
These people might
be "traditional" knowledge workers, but could just as easily be
someone working on the factory floor, or in a front office or retail role. They
might be an experienced senior manager or they might be a new joiner in a
junior position.
The point is that
everyone has knowledge, has information which could make a positive difference
to the way the organisation works - they simply need a culture and environment
in which they are able to share that knowledge. So if everyone is a "knowledge
worker" in the new social economy, then the term becomes entirely
worthless. Time to move on.
Register now! On
May 14th 2014, MWD's "Making Social Collaboration Work" conference is
taking place in London. This will be a chance to hear from organisations who
have already implemented social collaboration, to share ideas and best
practices, and to network with others in the same position.
#Collaboration #socialcollaboration