Tom Davenport holds the President’s Chair in Information Technology and Management at Babson College and is responsible for the overall management of the Institute for Process Management. He and Larry Prusak also manage the Working Knowledge program. His book, Thinking for a Living (2005), explains how to get better performance and results from knowledge workers. Previously, What’s the Big Idea: Creating and Capitalizing on the Best Management Thinking that he co-authored with Prusak, was named one of the three best books of the Spring 2003 season by Fortune magazine. Also in 2003, he was named one of the Top 25 consultants in the world by Consulting Magazine. Davenport is an Accenture Fellow and was the Academic Director of the Information Work Productivity Council, a research consortium of seven technology firms. He directed research centers at Ernst & Young, McKinsey & Company, and CSC Index, and most recently, what was once called the Accenture Institute of Strategic Change. He has written, co-authored or edited 11 books, including the first books on business process reengineering, knowledge management, and the business use of enterprise systems. He has also written hundreds of articles and columns for such publications as Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, California Management Review, Financial Times, Information Week, and CIO, among many others.
In a sense, everyone must “think for a living” in response to questions, problems, opportunities, etc. Davenport focuses his attention on “how to get better performance and results from knowledge workers” and everyone involved in an organization’s operations should be or helped to become productive “knowledge workers,” whatever their specific duties and responsibilities may be. Those who have read any of Davenport’s previous books–notably Working Knowledge and Information Ecology, co-authored with Laurence Prusak, The Attention Economy, co-authored with John Beck, What’s the Big Idea?, Mission Critical–already know that Davenport is among the most perceptive and eloquent business thinkers on the subject of knowledge management.
He carefully organizes his material within nine chapters. Throughout his lively and informative narrative, he responds to questions such as these:
Of interest is the matrix of four knowledge work types (illustrated in figure 2-1 on page 27) that Davenport identified during a research project on knowledge management in which he was involved with Jeanne Harris and Leigh Donaghue. He offers a classification structure for knowledge-intensive processes which range from individual actors to collaborative groups: Integration Model (e.g. systematic, repeatable work), Collaboration Model (e.g. improvisational work), Expert Model (e.g. Judgment-oriented work), and Transaction Model (e.g. routine work). Of course, different kinds of knowledge work require different kinds of knowledge workers. Effective managers are those who get the most appropriate worker in alignment with each task.
As Davenport explains, “A job in which knowledge is created should be treated very differently from one in which it is applied.” For example, “Those who find existing knowledge need to understand knowledge requirements, search for it among multiple sources, and pass it along to the requester or user.” Other workers create new knowledge. Still others (“packagers”) put together knowledge created by others. Knowledge workers can also be distinguished by the types of ideas with which they deal. “My view, however, is that the organizations that will be most successful in the future will be those in which it’s everyone’s job to be creating and using both big and small ideas.”
With regard to high-performance knowledge workers, they tend to be more effective and efficient experiential learners, seeming “to get more learning out of a single experience and continually updated their skills, expertise, and social awareness as a natural part of their work.” Also, many high-performers attributed problem-solving abilities to the acquisition of a broad base of knowledge. Moreover, the high-performers Davenport and his associates studied “often had unusual, and often somewhat illogical, career paths. However, they repeatedly told us in various ways that these different jobs provided them with unique perspectives and expertise in solving problems.” They characterized themselves as “calculated” risk takers but “when they do make a decision to pursue a given area of expertise, the high performers invest heavily, and seem to have a ‘compass’ for personal learning. They often described themselves as highly focused on the domains they decided to pursue.” High performers retain knowledge in domains already mastered while “screening out” irrelevant information.
Obviously, high performers are the most valuable of all knowledge workers. Therefore, the highest priorities for knowledge managers are to hire and then develop those who are either high performers or seem most likely to become one. How? Recognize and accommodate their needs for (a) important personal relationships, (b) accomplishing worthwhile tasks in a timely manner, and (c) proactive reciprocity regarding information and opportunities. According to Davenport, “perhaps the most important point to consider is the interrelated nature of these practices of high performers.” Davenport agrees with Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Warren Bennis that the most desirable, knowledge-oriented culture is characterized by “the Five Fs”: fast, flexible, focused, friendly, and fun. To establish and then sustain what Davenport describes as “Good Managerial Hygiene in the Knowledge Age,” offers a list of eight traits that apply to all kinds of workers and organizations. (These are discussed on pages 204-206.) It is imperative that managers understand these and other performance-related factors and how they interact with each other in the real world.
Davenport and Peter Drucker (among others) agree that the fate of an advanced economy depends on making knowledge workers more productive. Davenport concludes, “There is no business or economic issue that is more important to our long-term competitiveness and standard of living.”
Decades ago, Drucker said something to the effect “If you don’t have customers, you don’t have a business.” In other words, If you don’t have productive knowledge workers, you don’t have a chance.
Click here to print PDF file