After I wrote my busy vs. bursty manifesto for Web Worker Daily, I was handed an insight by Matt Hodgson who said he found my thoughts “rather uninsightful.” He said I “should have been talking about the knowledge economy.”
I agree, I should set the web economy against the knowledge economy, because they are two different things. I can’t agree, though, that I’m lacking in insight — I have many shortcomings but that’s not one of them.
Let’s take a Druckerism, emblematic of the knowledge economy and last century’s way of working:
Effective executives do not start with their tasks. They start with their time. And they do not start out with planning. They start by finding out where their time actually goes. Then they attempt to manage their time and to cut back unproductive demands on their time. Finally they consolidate their “discretionary” time into the largest possible continuing units. [From The Daily Drucker]
I’ll rework that for the web economy:
Web workers do not start with their tasks or with their time. They start with their attention. And they do not start out with planning or by finding out where their time actually goes. They start by finding where their attention wanders, and what gives them energy and increased attention. Then they attempt to let their attention flow freely and to cut back on redundant or tired information sources that demand their attention without providing new ideas or insight. Finally they combine what they have found into something new (software, web design, industry analysis, etc.) and make it available on the web where it can earn attention itself and lead to an ongoing multiplication of attention.
The knowledge worker (the executive in Drucker’s quote) goes after individual productivity; the web worker after group-based, collaborative, wisdom-of-crowds productivity. The knowledge worker cuts out unproductive uses of time; the web worker cuts out redundant information sources. The knowledge worker focuses on time efficiency; the web worker on attention expansion.
[With credit to Stowe Boyd for his ideas on attention and James Governor for his ideas about discontinuous productivity.]
6 Comments
Hi Anne,
I think you’re confusing Drucker’s TQM-aware executive with knowledge worker 1.0 (individual productivity), and that with the concept of knowledge worker 2.0 (collaborative awareness) - see the wikipedia article on Knowledge Worker 2.0 for a comparison (Matt Hodgson helped to write it).
People can read a lot into Drucker - they are like the visually disabled of old and the elephant - they see “social responsibility in business” (the tail) and say “Drucker is long like a snake”, or “total quality management” (the side) and say “Drucker is like a leathery wall”, or “knowledge worker as the key” (the trunk) and say “Drucker is like a thick hose”. He is the whole elephant
Cheers, Andrew
Andrew, I think you may be unable to see the broader picture due to the elephant in your field of sight.
The knowledge worker 2.0 article adds very little to the original knowledge worker article — certainly not enough to qualify for a version increment.
No one person or one set of ideas is “the whole elephant.” That’s the whole difference between web working and knowledge working.
Aloha, Anne
Sorry for disparaging you Anne. I think, though, you’ve missed the boat again on this one.
Yes, Knowledge Work is about personal information management. That’s only half the picture. Knowledge Work is also about sharing knowledge and this has always been about group-based, collaborative, wisdom-of-crowds productivity. More recently, switched on knowledge managers and knowledge workers know that this can be facilitated through social computing.
This is the essence of Drucker. It’s not about time mangement, but how you create and share knowledge and how managers can give you appropriate tools to get the job done.
As Andrew Boyd points out, us webby-types owe a lot to Drucker.
M
Sorry Anne,
try to address the logic rather than the analogy - individual efficiency is not directly related to collaboration (your comparison, not mine). If you comment on tropical fishkeeping, am I to take this as your views on Web 2.0? No? That is what you did with Drucker
And as to the Knowledge Worker 2.0 concept - you, who argue for burst over busyness, should get the difference between knowledge-worker-as-records-management-process-worker (1.0) and knowledge-worker-as-enabler-and-collaborator (2.0) more than anyone. Exactly where is the difference not worth a point release? Like I said, address the logic. Happy to discuss.
Cheers, Andrew
Hi Anne,
You know that I’m a big fan. I’m just not sure I’m on-board with this one. Drucker represents some of the most forward thinking regarding the future of work and management and actively supports many of the notions of web work you illustrate above. See Matt’s post and mine for a couple counter examples and see if you don’t change your point of view.
Cheers!
You guys certainly are worried when your guru gets challenged. I took one quote and reworked it for the web worker — I didn’t say your man is all wrong.
Was Newton any less a genius because he didn’t foresee quantum mechanics?
Tim, your post and the other comments are anything but convincing: the last quote you chose from Drucker is all about organizations and management, about how people have to associate with organizations to get anything done. That’s exactly what web workerhood is NOT about. Matt talks about what tools management will give workers. No, no, no. Web workerhood is about tools that workers choose, that percolate from bottom up not top down. And Matt points me at a blog post by Andrew that suggests the web might not exist if not for Drucker. The history of the web says otherwise.
I’m glad to have your feedback on these ideas — because you make it look exactly like a paradigm shift as described by Thomas Kuhn. Those who are fixed in the old paradigm deride the new one. They cannot understand it.
Andrew: individual vs. group-based productivity is not analogous to fishkeeping vs. Web 2.0. Check up on recent research that shows that group-based productivity can be higher when individuals dispense with old-time efficiency think. As far as using analogy or logic, you’re the one who jumped to the elephant analogy rather than making a cogent argument.