Month: December 2024

The knowledge work diaspora

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Knowledge work — also referred to as thought work — aims to develop information into actionable plans and reach decisions about them. For private sector organizations, that includes product or service development, marketing strategy and planning logistics and access to resources. For governments, it’s how to implement public policy and develop programs and budgets to support them.

None of these functions necessarily require knowledge workers to gather regularly in dedicated office space though they might find it beneficial to gather on occasion, perhaps in a day or week-long intensive Kanban or brainstorming session as well as to strengthen social bonding among team members. With communication and collaboration possible from most anywhere to perform these functions, a physical space now must demonstrate that benefit since the traditional office it is no longer the default setting for knowledge work. Nor is it practical or cost effective for large numbers of knowledge workers to regularly commute to one.

This fundamental shift in knowledge work has produced a knowledge work diaspora out centralized commuter offices. It’s upending our concept of knowledge work. Some knowledge organizations that have traditionally viewed their workforces like factory parts inventories are physically inventorying them in office spaces. They have done so by ordering their staff members to report to offices – referred to as “return to office” for what is effectively a census of commitment. If they are not there, they’re not counted, discounted for promotions and even dismissed. They are reassessing the size of their staffs and future office space needs since both of these have been traditionally measured by staff office presence.

The rapid emergence of AI in knowledge work adds a new wrinkle. It requires sizable space for its servers, but unlike humans doesn’t need office space. It too will hasten the diaspora of knowledge work as it was known before ICT began to change it decades ago.

This is a time of great change among knowledge workers and organizations that will require rethinking and adjustment. Or what futurist Alvin Toffler described as developing a form of postmodern literacy when he said “The illiterate of the future are not those who can’t read or write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

Return to office tensions point to reassessment of employment for knowledge work

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“Increasing numbers of employees may leave traditional employment, choosing to start their own businesses as freelancers and contractors.“

So predicts management author Lynne Curry in a blog post today. The context of her post is tension in knowledge organizations. The source is conflict between managers’ beliefs that knowledge work – gathering and the analysis of information to reach a decision – can only be done optimally at centralized, commute in offices – and the practical experience of knowledge workers who have done their work outside of this setting with no commute necessary.

What’s noteworthy is Curry’s prediction that is the decentralization and virtualization of knowledge work is eroding the concept of employment as well. “Traditional employment” as Curry terms it means the employer determines when, where and how an employee performs their job duties. When knowledge work can be done outside of a set “workplace” or time frame, that definition doesn’t fit as well anymore. Employers operating from this framework might sense that not only are their beliefs about how knowledge work is best done are being challenged, but also their agency and authority.

In that sense, the tensions we are seeing expressed as the “return to office” debate are fundamentally questioning whether knowledge work necessarily involves employment. Or can it be done as Curry suggests on a contract basis with knowledge workers paid to complete defined projects? That would require a serious rethink by knowledge organizations of whether employment as traditionally defined continues to make sense or if another model of management would be more appropriate taking into account advances in information and communications technology over the past 30 years.

Knowledge work has been slowly decentralizing for decades. But since COVID pandemic, it seems like just the past few years.

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Many knowledge organizations have been blindsided by the rapid decentralization of knowledge work. It is disrupting the usual manner of knowledge work as it has been done for decades: commuting daily to a centralized office location. That commute is no longer necessary. Knowledge work no longer requires the physical transportation of knowledge workers to an office building. Thanks to information and communications technology advances of the past five decades, the centralized, commute in office has become obsolete.

Knowledge organizations are struggling to adapt to this change. It’s been building since it was first predicted in the mid-1960s by futurist Arthur C. Clarke and as high speed highways began to exceed design capacity the following decade. But from the perspective of many knowledge organizations, it arrived with suddenness and surprise amid public health measures to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. That has left many knowledge organizations unprepared and facing future shock from too much change at once. This has led to negative consequences including:

  • Staff surveillance and “coffee badging;”
  • Lowered morale and engagement;
  • Loss of top performers and future leaders;
  • Negative social and news media accounts;
  • Difficulty planning staffing and space requirements.

The good news is knowledge organizations don’t have to navigate the shift alone. They can adapt and do so in a manner consistent with their values and mission and thrive in today’s decentralized, virtualized world of knowledge work.

Help is available.

Steve Jobs’ “bicycle for our minds” spurred rethinking of how knowledge work is done. Now knowledge work itself on threshold of redefinition.

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There has been considerable discussion in both news and social media over tensions within knowledge organizations over presence in commute-in offices. The need for presence began eroding in the 1980s with microcomputers (called the “bicycle for our minds” by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs), their portability in the 1990s and the commercialization of the Internet the following decade along with personal communications devices. Unlike typewriters, word processors and photocopiers and telephone switchboards, these information and communication technology (ICT) innovations don’t require dedicated offices. As such, they also eliminate the need for knowledge workers’ presence in them.

This is the ICT driven revolution of knowledge work. However, there is potential for another that leverages ICT’s deemphasis of when and where it’s performed: how knowledge work itself is defined and organized. For much of the time since the term was coined in the 1950s by management expert Peter Drucker, it has been defined and organized based on an industrial age manufacturing model along with centralized, standardized inputs. One repeatable job function performed at set time (8-5, Monday through Friday) in a centralized location (the commute in office).

In a 2013 Harvard Business Review article, Roger L. Martin proposed reconceptualizing knowledge work away from inputs. Martin instead wrote that knowledge work is best defined by its products – decisions — with knowledge organizations functioning as “decision factories.” However, unlike manufacturing organizations and their tangible, manufactured goods, decisions don’t require a physical factory. The real work is done in the brains of knowledge workers wherever they can be activated and engaged. Those thoughts are developed and communicated to other knowledge workers and decision makers via ICT. While Steve Jobs’ computer may provide the “bicycle for our minds,” the brain turns the pedals. The pedaling can be done anywhere — and advanced telecommunications networks are the bicycle paths.

Martin raises implications for how employment has been traditionally defined, by job title or position. This is directly tied to the expectation of presence in an office since presence is seen as essential to the functions of those roles and positions. That expectation drives much of the tension in knowledge organizations as knowledge work itself is being rethought. Knowledge workers are understandably piqued by unnecessary commutes to distant offices and going through the motions of nominal presence such as “coffee badging.”

Instead of jobs titles and roles, Martin suggests knowledge work be organized as projects with the goal of reaching decisions. For private sector organizations, those could be decisions about what goods and services to sell and to what markets and at what price. For government agencies, how to use available public resources to support their functions. The thought work of these projects is independent of time and place.

Changing nature of knowledge work: it’s fundamentally not about the workplace.

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The controversy over return to office mandates and hybrid working is driven by a larger, less recognized underlying mega trend: the changing nature of knowledge work.

It began in the 1980s with the introduction of mass market micro “personal” computers that became what Apple Computers founder Steve Jobs called “bicycles for our mind.” Bicycles are personal vehicles. However, for knowledge work, there is no need to travel to a destination as one would with a bicycle or other vehicle. The personal computer expresses the knowledge generated by its user and is capable of transmitting it instantly most anywhere thanks to an equally revolutionary innovation that came the following decade: the commercial mass market internet. And a decade later, the smartphone.

These information and communications technology developments have removed the need for dedicated office space. Steve Jobs’s brain bicycle replaced the automobile and bus to physically move knowledge workers’ bodies along with their thoughts. The “high speed” Internet as it’s commonly called is replacing what were designed as high speed highways that became less so as they exceeded their 20th century carrying capacity.

Many knowledge organizations are struggling with this powerful force of change that rapidly accelerated with the social distancing disease control measures of the COVID 19 pandemic. The source of their struggle is largely misconceptual. Knowledge work has fundamentally changed. The location where it is done is no longer as relevant. But the issue has instead been framed as if location is the paramount “workplace” issue.

It’s far bigger than that. The challenge knowledge organizations face is adapting to the larger shift in how knowledge work is done and the best way to structure and manage it going forward. They must judiciously determine when co-located activities are needed and when they are not given that being co-located comes with substantial costs to both knowledge organizations and their staff members.