Published: Monday, August 21, 2023 – 12:03
Who Are the True Knowledge Workers?
The term “high level” has always made me bristle because of its implications about manual work. Drucker’s thesis, perhaps inadvertently, reinforced a 20th-century predisposition that manual work comprises mostly low-level, repetitive tasks that require only eyes and hands. Problem-solving, creativity, and innovation were in the domain of someone with a college degree.
In his 1969 The Age of Discontinuity (second edition Routledge, 1992), Drucker predicted that new industries would employ mostly knowledge workers, which in light of the explosion of all things digital was probably on the mark. Then, in 1999, in California Management Review, in an article titled “Knowledge Worker Productivity: The Biggest Challenge,” Drucker advised, “The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century is… to increase the productivity of knowledge work and knowledge workers…” similar to what had been done in the 20th century to the factory (the manual work.) Implicit in Drucker’s argument was that additional focus on manual work was relatively less important.
Managers that get this see everyone as a knowledge worker, not just the people whose work is information- rather than material-related, and not just the people with degrees and belts. Everybody who is engaged in continuous improvement has a professional challenge to remove problems and improve the work.
However, someone has to pay for this content. And that’s where advertising comes in. Most people consider ads a nuisance, but they do serve a useful function besides allowing media companies to stay afloat. They keep you aware of new products and services relevant to your industry. All ads in Quality Digest apply directly to products and services that most of our readers need. You won’t see automobile or health supplement ads.
Published Aug. 4, 2023, on the Old Lean Dude blog.
منبع: https://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/lean-article/who-are-true-knowledge-workers-082123.html
This perspective was well-ensconced in corporate policy by the time I joined the workforce—by Drucker’s definition, as a knowledge worker—as an assistant manager in a marketing department. At the age of 23, knowing nothing about manufacturing, and located in an office building a half-mile from the factory, I began my “high-level” career. A moment of truth burned indelibly in my memory is my boss’s response when I asked about visiting the factory to learn about the company: “There’s nothing there to learn. It’s all cut and dry.”