Does your workforce need to be more engaged? If the answer is "yes," contact Dr. Ehin for a speaking engagement. He'll help you find your organizational sweet spot, where everyone is fully engaged.
Home
Human Nature & The Knowledge Worker
Knowledge Workers Can’t Be Managed
Why can’t knowledge workers be managed in the traditional sense?
I suggest that the answer to this question is based on some insights regarding human nature.
In the Industrial Age (and still today, in many instances), people were primarily hired for the use of their hands and feet instead of their minds. Thinking and directing were the job of the bosses.
Organizations were designed and run like machines. As a result, employees were treated as expendable interchangeable parts and costs of production.
Conversely, workers needed various forms of equipment and tools that these organizations possessed in order to do their job and make a living. In other words, they had to have access to “means of production” since, with rare exceptions, they couldn’t afford to acquire their own machines and facilities necessary to attain an income for adequate subsistence.
Today’s knowledge professionals, who constitute more than a third of the United States workforce (and their numbers are constantly increasing), are faced with a completely different yet subtle situation.
What is subtle is that they own their means of production—the gray matter between their ears. Consequently, when they decide to join or leave an organization they carry their means of production with them.
As a result, knowledge workers are an investment and require balanced treatment so they will not walk out the door permanently.
Interestingly, giving them more money and other benefits will not have the desired effect in the long run.That is because knowledge professionals not only desire considerable personal autonomy but also the responsibility and accountability for running at least some part of an organization.
They need to be treated as partners or associates, not as typical Industrial Age employees.
And that, in a nut shell, is the reason why knowledge workers can’t be managed in the traditional sense.
But there’s much more we should understand about knowledge generation and the knowledge worker.
We need to develop organizations that continually nurture the collaborative best from all members and, in turn, reward them equitably and not just from a monetary standpoint.
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
