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)