knowledge workers

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.

At its core, return to office debate about redefining knowledge work

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Personal computing and communication devices and the Internet have decentralized knowledge work and made the daily trip to centralized commuter offices (CCOs) obsolete. Knowledge workers discovered its irrelevance and enjoyed recovering personal time spent commuting during the public health social distancing measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now as some organizations demand they return to the office (RTO) on a set number or designated days of the week, many are understandably rebelling.

But the real debate isn’t about showing up in person at the CCO on a prescribed number of specific weekdays. It’s about redefining knowledge work and specifically how it’s done and managed.

In his 2013 book 2013 eBook Four Dead Kings at Work: The Decentralization and Blending of Work in the 21st Century, author Dave Rolston predicted the imminent death of the four primary tenets or kings of knowledge work in the Industrial Age:

  1. Set job duties;
  2. Managed by a single manager;
  3. Performed at one place (the CCO);
  4. At the same time (8-5, Monday-Friday).

This definition worked well before 1990 when the tools for knowledge work were at the workplace and not portable like today’s personal devices, online databases, collaboration platforms and more recently, AI chatbots.

Now, organizations and knowledge workers must adjust to the post-Industrial Age environment. That entails determining when co-located work is beneficial and when it isn’t. It also requires assessing the communications culture.

When knowledge workers were regularly in the CCO, meetings — both scheduled and ad hoc — were frequent. Even too frequent for many knowledge workers. They express a real time, speaking-based communication culture.

To fully utilize today’s communication and collaboration tools, knowledge organizations must adopt a more written, asynchronous communication culture. They also must find the right balance between this and spoken communication and when knowledge workers must be assembled to discuss and sort through complex and difficult issues that benefit from synchronous, in person discussion. That is driven more by business needs to complete reports and projects and reach decisions rather than the daily calendar.

It’s also critical that knowledge organizations keep their missions clearly communicated to staff so they can see how their work makes a meaningful contribution as this article in today’s Wall Street Journal implies.

Exurban migration demands fiber delivered advanced telecom infrastructure, EVs

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Growth on the urban periphery, while a boon for housing affordability, comes with environmental costs, chewing up farmland and perpetuating the car-centric lifestyles that are a significant contributor to climate change. California, for instance, has a goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, but has found it increasingly out of reach as home prices have pushed workers farther from the urban core, where they drive more. In theory, if more people work from home, even in if more people work from home, even in a hybrid capacity, it would offset some of those emissions by cutting down daily commutes. But the farther people get from the urban density and public transportation, the more dependent they become on cars even for short trips.

Source: House Hunters Are Leaving the City, and Builders Can’t Keep Up – The New York Times

As per previous posts on this blog, fiber delivered advanced telecom is the essential utility for knowledge workers migrating to the exurbs. That replaces the need for long commutes and related carbon emissions. But as this NYT piece points out, personal vehicles are still needed for short trips — a need that can be met with EVs.

Leased/owned office space downsizing likely to accelerate

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Knowledge work is currently in an awkward transition out of centralized commuter offices (CCOs) and dispersed to home offices. Many organizations have adopted what’s referred to as “hybrid” arrangements with staff working in the CCO a set number of scheduled days, typically two or three days a week. For knowledge workers, the hybrid arrangement is disruptive. The vast majority need only one workspace as shown during the COVID-19 public health measures.

A home office is that location. It provides convenient access to food and coffee that fuel knowledge work, particularly given many if not most CCOs lack on site cafeterias. In addition, workspaces are customized to knowledge workers’ preferred equipment and ergonomics. Some, for example, may prefer sit/stand desks or kneeling chairs that aren’t present in both home offices and CCOs. Finally, their most portable knowledge work tool – the brain – does not require multiple locations in order to function effectively.

The homes of some knowledge workers don’t offer a good office setting. They may not have a suitable space for a home office setup or other circumstances that make it impractical as a regular workplace. These staff need and prefer the CCO to get their work done. But they are a small minority and don’t justify the amount of office space organizations must finance. They can get by with only a fraction of their current owned and leased space and considerably reduce operating expense.

Organizational management is recognizing the trend and potential sizable cost savings and rightsizing their office space footprints accordingly. Expect this to accelerate over the next few years.

Despite Remote Work, Rush Hour Returned – Bloomberg

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Source: Despite Remote Work, Rush Hour Returned – Bloomberg

The upshot of this piece is the potential bifurcation of knowledge organizations. One group staffed by those who live close in to urban centers where commutes are relatively short and can be done by foot powered transportation and public transit. These organizations have established “downtown” urban identities and convening cultures based on face to face interaction among staff, clients and vendors. They’re deeply invested in gleaming steel and glass office towers by virtue of ownership or long term leases.

Staff who commuted from the outer suburbs and distant reaches of metro areas who worked at home during pandemic public health measures are not going to be inclined to give up the equivalent of another workday as commuting time. That could lead to a sorting of personnel, with only those who fit into the organization’s let’s meet downtown culture remaining and the rest departing.

For suburban office parks, it’s a different story. A Houston transportation planner quoted in the article notes they serve merely as workplaces and lack the cultural vibe of the downtown office-based organization. For staff and consultants of these organizations, daily work activity of “sitting 8 hours a day drafting something or tapping a keyboard and interacting minimally with people,” can easily be performed in a home office.

A great post pandemic sorting among knowledge workers and organizations at hand.

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More than a year into America’s great work-from-home experiment, many companies have hailed it largely as a success. So why do some bosses think remote workers aren’t as committed as office dwellers? Recent remarks of numerous chief executives suggest the culture of workplace face time remains alive and well. At The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit this month, JP Morgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon said remote work doesn’t work well “for those who want to hustle.” Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon has called it “an aberration that we are going to correct as soon as possible.”

Source: Bosses Still Aren’t Sure Remote Workers Have ‘Hustle’ – WSJ

These comments demonstrate that for some organizations, gathering daily at a centralized, commute-in office (CCO) is an integral part of their cultures that cannot be easily erased in a single year. But it should be borne in mind that while CEOs have a large degree of influence on their organizational culture, it’s not absolute. Cultures are defined by all their members.

Now that their staff members have been freed of the personal time burden of daily commuting, many are understandably reluctant to reassume it. Knowledge organizations are now having to redefine their cultures for the post pandemic world going forward. They’ll undergo a sorting process as some staff depart for more virtual organizations while others who prefer working in a CCO align with CCO-based organizations — most likely those who live close by.

Certainly working in a CCO has its advantages, such as the social contact and in person communication with colleagues. But as commutes grow longer as metro areas sprawl and housing costs rise, the daily trip to and from a distant CCO becomes impractical where it might not be in small towns and less congested areas where knowledge workers can commute to the office by foot and/or bicycle. These less populated locales have also proven popular as CCOs closed down over the past year and knowledge workers sought more affordable and less congested settings, some in other states and countries.

Some knowledge CCO-based organizations may become the office equivalent of teaching hospitals where senior staff and managers closely interact with and supervise more junior staff and inculcate them in the cultural ways of their organizations. Others such as boutique consulting shops won’t have CCOs and attract as they have in recent years experienced people who can work as location independent team members and don’t require close supervision.

Coronavirus: Sorry, but Working From Home is Overrated – The New York Times

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Home-cooked lunches and no commuting while we deal with coronavirus can’t compensate for what’s lost in creativity.

Source: Coronavirus: Sorry, but Working From Home is Overrated – The New York Times

The author of this New York Times column argues working from home has more downsides than working in an office. As social creatures we need contact with others and work colleagues. (This is why the current social isolation measures are difficult for many.) In the 20th century, knowledge workers lived relatively close to their offices. But in the latter half of the century, the automobile and cheap fuel and a desire for suburban living resulted in their living in communities separated from their offices.

By the 21st century, metro transportation systems became overwhelmed by all the automobile commuting – the preferred way of getting to the office. Pushed beyond their design specs, commutes got more congested and longer — and sucked more and more time out of the lives of commuters. Adding more traffic lanes only kicked the proverbial can. The commutes are growing even longer as housing costs close to offices put them out of reach and send workers to the outlying metro areas in search of more affordable housing. And another thing humans need as well as socialization: contact with nature. The “rush hour?” Three hour daily round-trip commutes are not unheard of anymore.

The 20th century daily commute to office model is headed for obsolescence. We won’t be able to achieve a balance – and reduce the environmental impact of daily commute trips – by adhering to the 20th century model and the tyranny of time and distance that comes with it. A new model of performing knowledge work is needed that leverages information and communications technology instead of transportation to allow knowledge workers to exchange ideas as easily as they might by bumping into each other at the office. While at the same time providing opportunity for socializing with colleagues in person from time to time.

Knowledge economy should evolve beyond Industrial Age Ver. 2.0

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As much of the economy becomes more knowledge-based it continues to retain a key feature of the Industrial Age: geographic concentration in urban centers. That’s according to this piece recently appearing in Governing. Instead of a post-industrial economy, the economy is being rebooted as Industrial Age 2.0. As in ver. 1.0, work is centralized. Or clustered or agglomerated as it’s termed in the article. Less so in manufacturing plants but in office towers and sprawling info tech industry campuses requiring knowledge workers to show up there every workday just as in the industrial economy.

But that has distorted housing markets, driving up home prices and making nearby housing unaffordable for many. That in turn is expanding the geography of metro areas as knowledge workers seek more affordable housing in communities distant from the office towers and tech campuses in their centers. That drives a level of commuting to work metro areas’ 20th century transportation systems were not designed to handle, creating congested and unbearable “super commutes” that suck hours from each work day. Clustering and the agglomeration run up against fundamental limits. There is only so much residential real estate for knowledge workers to live on adjacent to the office towers and campuses. The law of supply and demand dictates only a limited amount will be affordable.

Analysts such as those cited in the Governing article contend the holy grail of the knowledge economy is the same as that of the offices and assembly lines of industrial economy: proximity. “You wouldn’t actually get the innovation if you took the people working on those things and spread them around the country,” Salim Furth, director of the Urbanity project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, told the publication. “We rely on face-to-face contact to come up with great innovation and changes.” Buy does that hold true most the time for most knowledge workers? Likely not. Knowledge work is both an individual and collaborative effort. And not all collaboration nor even the most productive must occur in same physical location. Lots of it can be done virtually using today’s information and communications technology.

The knowledge economy should evolve beyond Industrial Age Ver. 2.0 amid rising concern over the environmental impact of commute transportation demand, housing affordability and declining population health status (long commutes have a deleterious impact).

Bay Area commuters back taxes to pay to improve road, transit – SFGate

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Bay Area residents have grown so exasperated by worsening traffic and the paucity of government money to make things better that they’re willing to tax themselves to pay for a regional program of improvements.That’s according to a poll released Friday, just two days after Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic state legislators announced a transportation funding plan that would boost fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees for $52 billion in road and public-transportation improvements. Two years in the works, the plan would deliver much-needed funding for transportation but still leave many needs unfunded.

Source: Bay Area commuters back taxes to pay to improve road, transit – SFGate

Those long suffering commuters have a much lower cost solution thanks to the ingenuity of the Bay Area’s information technology companies. And it’s already available to them without the need for new taxes. Knowledge workers can utilize ICT to work at home and in their communities instead of getting into their cars and onto crowded freeways to drive to an office.

As management guru Peter Drucker sagely asked, “What is the point of spending such huge sums to bring a 200-pound body downtown when all you want of it is its eight-and-a-half-pound brain?”

Is your economic development opportunity commuting out of town EVERYDAY? | Michael Shear | LinkedIn

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We know there is a huge cost to getting people to work everyday: to the individual, the community and, to some extent, the employer. The costs are vehicles, gas, roads, pollution and time.

Is there a way to provide local job access to these commuters? Is there a model that would appeal to employers to have networked facilities in these communities. The costs of sending bits of information is minuscule relative to moving bodies. If you knew what companies/government agencies where hiring people from your community, might they work to examine how securely networked offices could create wins for communities, employees and employers alike.

Source: Is your economic development opportunity commuting out of town EVERYDAY? | Michael Shear | LinkedIn

Much of the push back directed at the decentralization of knowledge work out of centralized commuter offices (CCOs) due to the proliferation and maturation of information and communications technology is that CCOs provide an essential venue for daily collaboration. However, Shear — as do I in my recent book Last Rush Hour: The Decentralization of Knowledge Work in the Twenty-First Century — point out that daily, face to face collaboration comes at great cost. That cost isn’t adequately taken into account by the “CCOs are necessary to enable collaboration” adherents. In other words, the argument goes, we must endure the time suck and personal costs of daily commuting in order to collaborate.

I don’t buy that argument and I imagine neither does Shear. As he notes, with today’s level of ICT that allows thought work to be conducted most anywhere with decent Internet service, it’s far less costly to use ICT to collaborate by moving ideas and not the bodies attached to the brains that generate them. Shear proposes in order to facilitate that, communities can create shared office distributed work facilities that would allow knowledge workers to work in their own communities rather than trekking daily — often in congested rush hour traffic — to a CCO in another.