Les employés sont le plus grand actif d'une entreprise. Un classique.
Mais qu'en est-il des systèmes informatiques ?
Il semble que les ordinateurs / serveurs soient les seuls actifs importants des banques en faillite. Mais pourtant, ces mêmes banques devaient avoir d'importants partenariats avec les SAP et Siebel de ce monde.
2008/09/23
Actifs intangibles
Des couches et de la bière
En ces heures de paternité, j'aurais donc besoin de couches et de bière ! Ou peut-être pas...Back in 2002, Professor Daniel Power of the University of Northern Iowa traced the correlation to a 1992 data analysis by Teradata Corp. for Osco Drug -- an analysis that observed the purchase affinity, between 5 and 7 p.m., of the two apparently unrelated inventory items. Though Osco did not act on the observation in its store layout or promotional efforts, the striking simplicity of the example just begged for embellishment. "Beer and diapers" has since not only become the gerbil rumor of marketing, it has been enshrined as data mining's Isaac Newton and the falling apple or Archimedes in the bath. It simply shouts "Eureka."
Ouch!
Ok, je suis un fan fini du magazine Fortune, pas vraiment pour les hints financiers, mais plutôt pour les talents de story-tellers des journalistes.
En fait, une chance que je ne lis pas vraiment le tout pour faire de l'argent !
(via nicolaslangelier)
Infrastructures ferroviaires en Amérique du Nord
Le projet d'acquisition du EJ&E par le CN vu dans une plus large perspective de développement des infrastructures ferroviaires en Amérique du Nord.By all accounts, America will need more rail tracks in the coming years to handle freight for a growing population's needs, but laying down any new rails is a sure way for companies to stir up fierce local opposition. [...]
The growing furor over CN's plans to use this sleepy 198-mile loop around Chicago to circumvent its chronically clogged rail network is being watched carefully by other railroads to see how regulators handle the issue.
"The rail industry is keeping a pretty close eye on CN's bid for the EJ&E and the opposition to it," said Tom Mentzer, a logistics expert at the University of Tennessee. "This is one of a few test cases out there at the moment."
Analysts say the core issue for the rails is whether to pursue infrastructure projects without government support.
"The EJ&E case is symptomatic of the two faces that government shows on railroad issues," said Anthony Hatch, an independent railroad analyst. "On the one hand, politicians support trains as safer, more environmentally friendly and a good way to get freight off congested highways."
"But at the same time they pander to local political interests and campaign to have vital rail projects anywhere else but here," he added.
Google VC Fund
Post intéressant sur la mise en place d'un fonds d'investissement de la part de Google. L'entreprise a définitivement de l'argent dans les poches et comme investisseur, je ne sais pas si c'est le hype ou non, mais j'aurais tendance à leur faire confiance pour dénicher quelques perles sur le marché.The start-up company might be the next you, right? And if it is, you acquire it (presumably, your VC investment deals include first-acquisition rights). And you do so at a price lower than the one it would fetch after taking funding from traditional VCs. Then you bring the Google hive-mind and infrastructure to bear on the start-up’s innovations and bring them to market or use them to enhance your own product and services.
If the start-up turns out not to be the next you, you don’t follow up on your initial investment–saving yourself the grief of a dud acquisition.
Essentially, you transform the emerging technology market into one vast Google Labs from which you have pick of the litter. How’s that for a 20-percent time idea?
BOSS
BOSS : Build you Own Search Service.
Yahoo ouvre ses système et son code. Vive le partage de l'information.
La folie des grandeurs
Ils l'ont l'affaire les Chinois.
The second one is the Lijiang-Shangri La Railway with a total length of 161km. The interprovincial railway starts from the Lijiang Railway Station and will route through Tiger Leaping Gorge and Xiaozhongdian, scenic spots in Yunnan province.
Exothermique ou endothermique ?
Un classique du Web :
Question bonus: L'enfer est il exothermique (évacue de la chaleur) ou endothermique (absorbe de la chaleur)?
La plupart des étudiants ont exprimé leur croyance en utilisant la loi de Boyle (si un gaz se dilate il se refroidit et inversement) ou ses variantes. Cependant un étudiant eut la réponse suivante :
Premièrement, nous avons besoin de connaître comment varie la masse de l'enfer avec le temps. Nous avons donc besoin de connaître à quel taux les âmes entrent et sortent de l'enfer. Je pense que nous pouvons assumer sans risque qu'une fois entrée en enfer, l'âme n'y ressortira plus. Du coup, aucune âme ne sort. De même pour le calcul du nombre d'entrée des âmes en enfer, nous devons regarder le fonctionnement des différentes religions qui existent de par le monde aujourd'hui. La plupart de ces religions affirment que si vous n'êtes pas un membre de leur religion alors vous irez en enfer.
Comme il existe plus d'une religion exprimant cette règle et comme les gens n'appartiennent pas a plus d'une religion, nous pouvons projeter que toutes les âmes vont en enfer...
Maintenant regardons la vitesse de changement de volume de l'enfer parce que la loi de Boyle spécifie que pour que la pression et la température reste identique en enfer, le volume de l'enfer doit se dilater proportionnellement à l'entrée des âmes.
Cela donne deux possibilités :
1- Si l'enfer se dilate à une vitesse moindre que l'entrée des âmes en enfer, alors la température et la pression en enfer augmenteront indéfiniment jusqu'à ce que l'enfer éclate.
2- Si l'enfer se dilate à une vitesse supérieure à la vitesse d'entrée des âmes en enfer, alors la température diminuera jusqu'à ce que l'enfer gèle.
Laquelle choisir?
Si nous acceptons le postulat que ma camarade de classe Natacha m'a répondu durant ma première année d'étudiant: "il fera froid en enfer avant que je couche avec toi" et en tenant compte du fait que j'ai couché avec elle la nuit dernière, alors l'hypothèse doit être vraie et alors je suis sur que l'enfer est exothermique et à déjà gelé. Corollaire de cette théorie, c'est que comme l'enfer a déjà gelé, il s'en suit qu'il n'accepte plus aucune âme et du coup qu'il n'existe plus... Laissant ainsi seul le paradis, ainsi prouvant l'existence d'un être divin ce qui explique pourquoi, la nuit dernière, Natacha n'arrêtait pas de crier "oh mon dieu".
2008/09/21
On India
India is one country that tests every sense in your body to the maximum -
your sense of smell, your sense of taste, your sense of noise, your sense of
poverty, your sense of wealth.
Rapport de consultant
Citation d'un consultant de longue date:
Si tu as un mandat en entreprise, ton rapport final doit absolument contenir les points suivants : il y a manque de communication dans la boîte, il y a manque de consultation et les gens ont trop de responsabilité par rapport aux pouvoirs réels qu’ils ont.
Enseigner l'évolution
Enseigner les grandes religions aux petits Québécois ? En fait, c'est un cours d'histoire non ?
Et c'est quand même bien moins délicat que d'enseigner la théorie de l'évolution dans le sud des États-Unis...
DaaS : DVR as a Service
Un nouveau service d'enregistrement d'émissions de tv online.
Et avec la possibilité de skipper les annonces en plus.
Un bel exemple de l'adage qui veut que la pire des ententes soit préférable au meilleur des jugements.
2008/09/12
La machine
La machine is us/ing us, ok. Mais c'est quoi cette machine ?
Kevin Kelly apporte son grain de sel.
À retenir :
Link computers --> Net
Link pages --> Web
Link data --> Machine
Link things --> World
Mais pour lier les données, il faut faire preuve d'une grande transparence.
Très près du BI tout ça.
Leader VS Manager
Post intéressant sur le sujet.
Managers are people who do things right and leaders are people who do the right thing.
To do the right thing, a leader needs to understand what it takes to do things right.
2008/07/28
Truck vs. Rail
Article intéressant qui montre que les chemins de fer américains sont aussi sinon plus en croissance.
2008/07/13
Pourquoi Apple ?
Pourquoi vouloir travailler pour Apple (ou pour n'importe quelle compagnie dans le fond ) ?
"We don't get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we've chosen to do with our life. We could be sitting in a monastery somewhere in Japan. We could be out sailing. Some of the [executive team] could be playing golf. They could be running other companies. And we've all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it. And we think it is."
Don't f*** up
I am not alone !
At a lunch for managing directors at Mumbai's Indigo restaurant, Blankfein fields questions from roughly two dozen men (they are all men). To get things going, Blankfein asks, "Do you have any advice for me?" "Don't f--- up," says one MD.
Harvard
Ce que les étudiants d'Harvard retiennent de leur passage ?
All their answers are different, but they're all the same: none are about the content of the courses; all are about the experience.
Investissement
Pour un prochain investissement, j'aurais tendance à y aller avec Buffett (Vanguard S&P 500).
Google et le risque
Les fondateurs de Google essaient de conserver l'ambiance initiale de l'entreprise, axée sur l'innovation et le risque qui vient avec.
"Let me give you the argument that Larry and Sergey have made, which is, I think, surprising," Schmidt says. "They are concerned that the company is becoming too conservative. They say to me, 'We took huge risks when we had no cash. Now we have all of this cash and we take few risks.'"
Team building extrême
Wow, même si les résultats ne sont pas nécessairement là, on ne peut pas reprocher à Seagate de ne pas essayer d'améliorer leur team building.
But Watkins says that any CEO feels one pressure above all others: the pressure to grow. "I started out doing startups. I went through four IPOs," he says during one of a series of interviews over several months. "I loved that everyone did everything. There are no titles. You work together, treat each other like human beings, and there's great camaraderie. As companies grow, you create silos and you become titles. So I'd quit and go back to a startup. I finally got convinced to stay and try to manage people."
The key to modifying behavior is creating an environment where we can't rely on experience. In unfamiliar situations, people - especially when tired - are more apt to ask for help and work as a team. If he could show his people the value of teamwork outside the office, Watkins reasoned, they'd translate the experience back at Seagate.
2008/07/07
UK Gov Follows Wikinomics Example
Dans le même élan que l'exemple Goldcorp cité dans le livre Wikinomics pour illustrer le pouvoir du mass collaboration, le gouvernement britannique vient de lancer un concours pour faire une meilleure utilisation des données publiques.
Sécurité vs. Transparence.
Barrière vs. Démocratisation.
Bill Gates et le marketing
Pluie d'articles sur le départ de Bill Gates de Microsoft le 1er juillet dernier. Le plus intéressant, ce post de Seattle qui traite d'un email de Bill Gates rendu public lors des poursuites anti-monopole.
Gates blâme les développeurs/gestionnaires pour le mauvais fonctionnement du téléchargement de Moviemaker.
Série d'emails entre les blâmés pour savoir qui blâmer.
La réponse, le marketing !
Classique.
I have always been concerned about this and feel that this has a lot of engineering implications. I also feel that
the reason is it such a mess is because marketing teams own release to web in this company.
La fin de la méthode scientifique ?
Article intéressant du toujours intéressant Craig Anderson de Wired, aka GeekDad.
En résumé, un peu dans la lignée de ce post, il traite de la prolifération des données accessibles et de leur regroupement, mentionnant au passage que la méthode scientifique, basée sur la recherche de modèles testés subséquemment est en danger.
Dancing with Matt
Ce vidéo/projet est vraiment cool.
Ça donne le goût de partir en voyage. Big time.
Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.
Intermodal à Montréal
Comme ça, le gouvernement québécois compte miser sur le transport intermodal (pour entre autres favoriser les échanges commerciaux possibles via l'ALENA). Tant qu'à ça, pourquoi ne pas ouvrir une zone france dans l'est de l'île ? Projet qui a déjà été à l'étude, mais qui n'a pas été retenu sans trop savoir pourquoi. Ce serait beaucoup plus central qu'à Mirabel.
2008/05/31
L'innovation chez Google
There's a reason we talk about 70/20/10, where 70% of our resources are spent in our core business and 10% end up in unrelated projects, like energy or whatever. [The other 20% goes to projects adjacent to the core business.] Actually, it's a struggle to get it to even be 10%. People might think we're wasting money or whatever. But that's where all our new stuff has come from.
In our first founders' letter in 2004, we talked about the risk profile with respect to doing new innovations. We said we would do some things that would have only a 10% chance of making $1 billion over the long term. But we don't put many people on those things; 90% work on everything else. So that's not a big risk. And if you look at where many of our new features come from, it's from these riskier investments.
Larry Page, Google (Fortune, Mai 2008)
Leadership
The little book of leadership
Many of you want to be leaders, to make a difference. But you might be spending too much time self-marketing and not enough time researching, building bridges taking an interest in someone... In true leadership situations, listening comes before arm-waving.
About Geeks
To nontechnologists, IT isn't just a different discipline; it's a foreign culture.
Understanding Geeks
HBS - IT Governance
Article d'HBS sur le joyeux monde des technologies de l'information et sa governance.
Le rôle de l'art
Article intéressant sur le rôle de l'art et de la culture générale en éducation et plus particulièrement au MBA.One key objective is to help business school students to become experts in both innovative marketing techniques and sustainable, original product development.
Gaming & Leadership
Hundreds of thousands of players — sometimes millions —
interact daily in highly complex virtual environments.
These players self-organize, develop skills, and settle into
various roles. Leaders emerge that are capable of recruiting,
organizing, motivating, and directing large groups of players
toward a common goal. And decisions are made quickly,
with ample, but imperfect, information. Sound familiar?
New leadership VS Gamers !
(full report)
2008/05/27
Combien ça prend ?
Zappos offre 1000$ à ses employés pour quitter. Combien ça prendrait pour me faire quitter mon travail ?
La suite de l'article initial.
Projet Six Sigma chez CSX
En réduisant la quantité d'essence consommée par les locomotives, ils ont sauvé plus de 28 millions en 3 ans.
IT in Health Care
J'aimerais être aussi productif que ce blog qui parle des défis IT dans le monde de la santé.
La réforme
À l'encontre de la réforme scolaire québécoise ?
“The motivation behind this research was to examine a very widespread belief about the teaching of mathematics, namely that teaching students multiple concrete examples will benefit learning,” said Jennifer A. Kaminski, a research scientist at the Center for Cognitive Science at Ohio State. “It was really just that, a belief.”
2008/05/16
Myers-Briggs
My type: Active INTJ
Moderate towards Introversion (vs Extraversion).
Clear towards Intuition (vs Sensing).
Moderate towards Thinking (vs Feeling).
Moderate towards Judging (vs Perceiving).
INTJs are typically innovators in their fields. They trust their inner vision of how things fit together and relentlessly move their ideas to action. They would rather spend time on what they believe is important that on what's popular with others.
INTJs are independent and individualistic, and others may see them as stubborn at times. They move ahead with or without the support of others, and they have a single-minded concentration.
They like using logic to solve complex, challenging problems. Routine, everyday tasks bore them. They analyze and attempt to fit pieces together into a coherent whole.
Although INTJs are usually organized and follow through, they may sometimes ignore details that do not fit their vision of the future. If these details are important, their ideas may not work as well as they would like.
INTJs are likely to be most satisfied in a work environment that values their insights and ideas and lets them work independently. People can count on them for their vision and innovative solutions to problems in their field.
2008/04/06
De la politique
Sommes-nous prêts pour un gouvernement qui nous présentera exactement la réalité économique et sociale et des choix qui en découlent ? J'en doute et la comparaison des programmes démocrates et républicains de la politique d'assurance maladie aux États-Unis en est un bel exemple.
Gérer la charité
Kiva.org, une façon de gérer ses dons et de suivre la situation choisie par la suite. Le donneur - consommateur (via Fortune).
Élever un enfant
Her grandfather, a retired judge, scrutinized report cards, presided over homework, and in his later years prepared her in advance for all the theorems in her geometry book to be sure she'd be able to excel if he were to die before the school year ended. Every night at dinner her mother would present a world problem to Nooyi and her sister and have them compete to solve it as if they were a President or Prime Minister. Though her family is Hindu, Nooyi attended a Catholic school, was an avid debater, played cricket, badgered her parents (and the nuns) until she was allowed to play the guitar, and then formed an all-girl rock band - the first ever at the Holy Angels Convent.
Portrait d'Indra Nooyi, CEO de Pepsi, dans Fortune.
Ah les jeunes
Article de la revue Commerce qui titre : Cessons de blâmer les jeunes.
Ce vide sur le plan des valeurs dans la grande entreprise a un impact sur les PME : il leur donne l'occasion de le combler en offrant un environnement plus stimulant à l'échelle humaine, où l'on peut s'identifier à de vraies valeurs. Voilà qui devrait amener les grandes entreprises à faire un certain examen de conscience. Alors, ne soyons pas trop sévères avec les jeunes. Les employeurs que nous avons connus étaient bien plus inspirants que ceux que nous leur proposons aujourd'hui.
2008/04/05
Free
Après le Free Culture de Lawrence Lessig et son Long Tail, Craig Anderson, rédacteur en chef du magazine Wired, traite de la gratuité des ressources informatiques dans son article Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business.
2008/03/17
2008/03/02
Jeunes entrepreneurs
Peu d'appui financier est disponible aux moments importants du démarrage d'une entreprise pour les jeunes entrepreneurs du Québec, estime le président de Desjardins Capital de risque, Louis Roquet.
(via Radio-Canada)
Dans la même lignée, Mon équipe de rêve, du coaching pour les investisseurs (!?), en direct de la Rive-Sud.
2008/03/01
GTD : closing doors
Avis aux adeptes de la méthode Getting Things Done (GTD), la meilleure idée demeure peut-être de limiter ses options.
Google en entreprise
Même si les produits de Google restent en grande majorité axés sur les particuliers, la nouvelle suite d'outils de bureau (Google Pack) attaque désormais le marché des entreprises avec un clone de Microsoft Sharepoint : Google Sites.
2008/02/19
Halifax et l'Inde
On risque d'en entendre parler pendant un bout.
New Brunswick Transportation Minister Denis Landry is one of several Atlantic politicians and business stakeholders looking at how the Atlantic region can capitalize on one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.
Landry is overseas visiting India this week in an effort to promote Canada's Atlantic Gateway strategy for Indian shippers, business leaders, and key government representatives.
[...]
Included among them are Wes Armour, president and CEO, Armour Transportation; John Murphy, vice-president of transportation, J.D. Irving Ltd; Ron Tepper, president and CEO of Consolidated FastFrate; and Doug Hayden-Luck, sales director, international intermodal, for CN Rail.
2008/02/17
Together we innovate
Article tiré du WSJ.
Most companies continue to assume that innovation comes from that individual genius, or, at best, small, sequestered teams that vanish from sight and then return with big ideas. But the truth is most innovations are created through networks—groups of people working in concert.
The misperception has never been more damaging, as companies pour more money into generating ideas and then end up frustrated as innovations simply don't develop. To lay the groundwork for innovation, organizations must make it easy for their employees to build networks—talk to their peers, share ideas and collaborate.
Making an impact
Des gradués MBA qui désirent faire une différence :
Once they had acquired an MBA, the traditional route for students was to follow the well-trodden path into consultancy or investment banking. But times are changing and as sustainability and “green” issues attract a higher profile, more MBA graduates are looking for jobs that exhibit at least an element of corporate social responsiblity.
WSJ - New Era Dawns for Rail Building
Front page du WSJ.
For decades, railroads spent little on expansion, even tore up surplus track and shrank routes. But since 2000 they've spent $10 billion to expand tracks, build freight yards and buy locomotives, and they have $12 billion more in upgrades planned.
The buildout comes as the industry transitions away from its chief role in recent decades of hauling coal, timber and other raw materials in manufacturing regions. Now, increasingly, railroads are moving finished consumer goods, often made in Asia, from ports to major cities. Their new higher-volume routes, called corridors, often serve the South, where the rail system is less developed and the population is rising.
Et un commentaire intéressant :
Noticeably absent from the discussion are two of the largest surviving North American railways: CN and CP, each of whom own substantial networks south of the 49th parallel. That might just be because the article is focussed on US-based railways, or it might indicate another situation where Canadian business is failing to invest to keep up with their American competitors.
Fortune, 21 janvier 2008 - Innovation
Tiré de "Six Leaps of Innovation", l'organisation d'une campagne politique virale.
Paul has proved once again that a candidate who knows how to tap the collective power of the Web can pull in serious cash. How serious? More than $18 million in the fourth quarter alone, almost all of it raised online using Web 2.0 tools like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, You-Tube - you name it. Lam has even strapped a webcam to a baseball cap and broadcast live video of the candidate on Justin.tv.
Globalvia
Dans la même lignée que Macquarie, Glovalvia Instraestructuras qui se veut aussi un "partner for the infrastructure sector of the future". Cela inclue des terminaux portuaires, du transport ferroviaire métropolitain et des tramways.
Je reviens sur ma question : à quand le prochain grand développement ferroviaire ?
Fortune, 26 novembre 2007 - Web 2.0
Un article qui résume bien la facette économique du social networking.
Fortune, 26 novembre 2007 - Paypal Mafia
Portrait de Fortune de la "Paypal Mafia".
YouTube, Yelp, The Founders Fund, Slide, LinkedIn, Sequoia Capital.
2008/02/16
Gartner
Let's face it, we in the computing industry have the best excuse in the world to put off making decisions. It's called Gartner.
- David Taylor
Responding the challenge of choice
Agile Business Conference 2006
Lobbying
Canadian National, which lobbied Congress, the Surface Transportation Board and Transportation Department, spent nearly $1.3 million in the second half of 2007 to lobby the federal government, according to a disclosure form posted online Feb. 8 by the Senate's public records office.
The company spent $1 million in the first six months of 2007 to lobby on largely the same issues.
(canadianbusiness)
Railways scrambling to meet demand
Customers are clamouring for more space to move their goods on the rails, leaving the carriers scrambling to keep up.
"Right now we are not meeting our customer demands. The demand for our transportation services is very strong," James Foote, CN's executive vice-president of sales and marketing, said during an investment webcast.
CN, CPR and the four largest U.S. railways are expanding because they need to handle ever-increasing volumes of freight and reduce bottlenecks along their systems, notably at ports, transportation consultant Greg Gormick said. "Demand is growing, and networks are being stretched to the limit," he added.
(reportonbusiness)
Note to self : à quand la construction de nouvelles lignes ?
SSM
Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) is an approach to organisational process modelling and it can be used both for general problem solving and in the management of change.
Deming
L'homme derrière la révolution industrielle du Japon et le modèle Toyota.
System of Profound Knowledge
1- Appreciation of a system: understanding the overall processes involving suppliers, producers, and customers (or recipients) of goods and services (explained below);
2- Knowledge of variation: the range and causes of variation in quality, and use of statistical sampling in measurements;
3- Theory of knowledge: the concepts explaining knowledge and the limits of what can be known (see also: epistemology);
4- Knowledge of psychology: concepts of human nature.
Deming offered fourteen key principles for management for transforming business effectiveness. In summary :
1- Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of a product and service with a plan to become competitive and stay in business. Decide to whom top management is responsible.
2- Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. We can no longer live with commonly accepted levels of delays, mistakes, defective materials, and defective workmanship.
3- Cease dependence on mass inspection. Require, instead, statistical evidence that quality is built in. (prevent defects instead of detect defects.)
4- End of the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, depend on meaningful measures of quality along with price. Eliminate suppliers that cannot qualify with statistical evidence of quality.
5- Find Problems. It is a management’s job to work continually on the system (design, incoming materials, composition of material, maintenance, improvement of machine, training, supervision, retraining)
6- Institute modern methods of training on the job
7- The responsibility of the foreman must be to change from sheer numbers to quality… [which] will automatically improve productivity. Management must prepare to take immediate action on reports from the foremen concerning barriers such as inherent defects, machines not maintained, poor tools, and fuzzy operational definitions.
8- Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
9- Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales and production must work as a team to foresee problems of production that may be encountered with various materials and specifications.
10- Eliminate numerical goals, posters, slogans for the workforce, asking for new levels of productivity without providing methods.
11- Eliminate work standards that prescribe numerical quotas.
12- Remove barriers that stand between the hourly worker and his right of pride of workmanship.
13- Institute a vigorous program of education and retraining.
14- Create a structure in top management that will push every day on the above 13pts.
Quotes :
There is no substitute for knowledge.
The most important things cannot be measured.
The problem is at the top; management is the problem.
To successfully respond to the myriad of changes that shake the world, transformation into a new style of management is required. The route to take is what I call profound knowledge—knowledge for leadership of transformation.
Knowledge-worker
SIX major factors determine knowledge-worker productivity.
1-What is the task ?
2- It demands that we impose the responsibility for their productivityon the individual knowledge workers themselves. Knowledge workers haveto manage themselves. They have to have autonomy.
3- Continuing innovation has to be part of the work, the task and theresponsibility of knowledge workers.
4- Knowledge work requires continuous learning on the part of theknowledge worker, but equally continuous teaching on the part of theknowledge worker.
5- Productivity of the knowledge worker is not - at least not primarily- a matter of the quantity of output. Quality is at least important.
6- Finally, knowledge worker productivity requires that the knowledgeworker is both seen and treated as an asset rather than a cost. It requires that knowledge workers want to work for the organization inpreference to all other opportunities. [...]
In most knowledge work, quality is not a minimum and a restraint, butis the essence of the output.Productivity therefore has to aim first at obtaining quality and notminimum quality but optimum if not maximum quality. Only then can one ask : What is the volume, the quantity of work ?
The main trouble is, however, not the difficulty of measuring quality. It is the difficulty - and more particularly the sharp disagreements -in defining what the task is and what it should be.
Management Challenges for the 21st Century (Peter F. Drucker)
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