Image via Wikipedia The essence of good knowledge work is uniqueness not uniformity. The ideal knowledge work product is exactly what your client asked for and could only have been created by you. The challenge is that we have been conditioned by the industrial economy to value uniformity and see uniqueness as undesirable variation instead [...]
Tagged Knowledge workMy long-time friend (old is such an ugly word) Vaughn Merlyn at IT Organization Circa 2017 points to the following fascinating animation to a speech by Dan Pink on his most recent book Drive, which I reviewed here earlier this year. It’s well worth 10 minutes of your time to watch. We are in [...]
Tagged Knowledge work, motivationDebates over whether the Internet is making us smart or stupid are entertaining in the bar and can serve as a pleasant background noise for ruminating during a keynote address in a dimly lit hotel ballroom. When I get back to work on Monday (or more likely on Sunday night) I return to the reality [...]
Tagged Knowledge workI’m just back from the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston. Fortunately, there were a number of bloggers more proficient than I at tweeting and reporting on the action as it happened. Bill Ives, Mary Abraham, and Patti Anklam all provided excellent blog posts, while the tweet stream at #e2conf was rich. What follows are some [...]
Tagged Enterprise 2.0The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, Gawande, Atul The idea of a simple checklist to raise the quality of a routine practice seems innocuous enough. It also seems to rankle those with lots of education and experience as an unnecessary intrusion on their autonomy. The canonical example is the story of the effort [...]
Tagged checklist, health care, Knowledge workI came across the following YouTube video the other day while checking out Boing Boing (one of my favorite sources of interesting and provocative stuff). Fascinating in its own right, but I keep coming back to it and thinking what it also has to say about the world we work in. Some thoughts: Don’t let [...]
Tagged Knowledge workImage by The Value Web Photo Gallery via Flickr I’m struggling with the issue of incentives in organizations trying to promote improved knowledge management and more effective use of new collaboration tools such as blogs, wikis, and the like. Invariably, after an early spurt of activity and experimentation with the new systems, usage plateaus and [...]
Tagged behavioral economics, Incentives, Knowledge workPatti Anklam and I have reconnected after first meeting several years ago. We navigate in the same circles and our networks overlap, but I hadn’t been carefully following her work. My mistake and I’ve fixed that now. Here’s a recent piece from her with a very good overview presentation on moving from a general understanding [...]
Tagged Knowledge work, Social mediaJordan Frank is VP of Sales and Business Development for Traction Software. Last Fall, Paula Thornton ( @rotkapchen) interviewed Jordan during Traction’s annual user group meeting. Jordan has been working with a variety of knowledge intensive organizations over the much of the last decade. Here he shares some of his insights on the interplay between [...]
Tagged Knowledge work, TractionHere’s a typically thought provoking session from TED. Conductor Itay Talgam uses videos of conductors leading performances as a launching point for reflecting on leadership. For organizations that depend on the active and creative engagement of their knowledge workers (who doesn’t), Talgam’s perspective is especially relevant.
Tagged leadership, management
