R John Howe responds at length to my control problem post.
> I think the shift from traditional manual work on physical items to work
> that involves thought and information is assuredly one that has
> occurred and that continues to occur. But I am not sure that this
> distinction carries with it yet very often the differences that Fred's
third
> category suggest.
I think the third category as suggesting what is required or constitutes a
good match with the nature of the work in that category. I didn't mean to
imply that the third column was in place.
> The notion of "knowledge" worker may be too unfocused for much precise
> analysis. Many workers who are no longer physically working to produce
> physical products are not by any stretch of the imagination involved much
> in work that might be called innovative (or where innovation is particular
> desired or permitted).
>
> Both Fred and I have worked with varieties of claims examiners.
> Such folks are pretty clearly knowledge workers in Fred's conception, but
> they have not moved far from the assembly line.
I tend to think of them as information assembly line workers, John. I don't
think of them as knowledge workers, although I happen to believe that
everyone's work consists of a mix of repetitive, adaptive and innovative
work, just as most organizations have a mix of repetitive, adaptive and
innovative work systems.
> In fact the work that Fred and I have done with them has often been
> precisely to derive (or in Fred's case to construct) fairly standardized
> ways of making decisions in cases using particular items of evidence and
> using given decision criteria.
Yes, I believe that's a fair assessment. Indeed, I used to say that I
really didn't care how claims examiners currently did their work; my
objective was to devise and put in place a more productive way (i.e.,
system) for doing it. My examination of how they currently did the work was
mainly to identify the results expected of the work process, not the methods
used to do it.
> There is great concern that these decisions be as uniform as possible (in
> fact one of the bases for overturning such a decision is that it has moved
> outside the approved decisionmaking processes or has not applied decision
> criteria in ways that are uniform between cases).
>
> So the first argument I would make is that the move to "knowledge" work
does
> not leave the "prefigured" world to the extent that Fred's typology
suggests.
I agree, John; however, I stipulate that much of what is being called
knowledge work isn't. It is as I indicated above, information assembly line
work.
> This is also reflected on the modes of management still largely being
> applied to knowledge workers. Yes, there are some people being paid to be
> creative and innovative and whose work can no longer really be managed in
> traditional ways. But management still almost always continues
> to try to do this. I know some folks in basic scientific research who
have left
> government funded projects because the government still wants them to talk
> about the "results" they are going to produce with their work.
>
> I am currently doing consulting work that fits reasonably Fred's notion of
> "configured" work, but my statement of work is still couched in producing
> units of product (and for awhile specified quite closely the time frame in
> which the products I am building were to be delivered).
Me, too, John. Indeed, I think much of my work fits the middle column:
adaptive. It's not prefigured and it's not completely configured.
> Now the field of managment has moved in recent years to suggest (on quite
> different grounds) that traditional strategies of management control are
> ineffective and inappropriate and that the "manager's" central
> contribution to the performance improvement equation is more likely to be
> positive if managers move to supporting and facilitating actions such as
providing
> needed resources, pushing down quickly relevant information and removal of
> obstacles.
I think many of the pressures to change one's management style stem more
from social and political considerations than from a serious examination of
the requirements posed by the work itself. What you mention immediately
above fits for me the category of simple exhortation.
>
> But I see no sense in contemporary managers that they are moving away from
> traditional strategies of control. If anything they feel more than ever
> (Wall Street has not helped here) that the central task of managment is
> still located in traditional modes of control and they often feel
> downright guilty about not taking adquate actions in this area.
I agree. I don't see any major move away from traditional strategies of
control. In some settings, that probably doesn't present much of a problem;
in others it might.
> I also disagree that the vast majority of knowledge workers are in a
> situation that could even vaguely be called that of "partner." Again is
> seems to me that the traditional relationships still largely
> obtain. There has been a possible shift of power from "capitalist-owners"
> in most companies to "top management" but I think it is nearly
propagandistic to
> characterize most knowledge workers, even most managers, as "partners."
I wasn't implying that they are partners, John, I was suggesting that they
are better treated as such for work fitting that category. My three columns
don't represent portrayals of what exists; they are instead qualities that I
think fit the category.
> Several who have responded already have said that they still
> sense pressures to standardize work, even if there are stages at which
> it might be legitimately described as "configured."
>
> I think this is not only true but inevitable. Organizations want
> to produce predictable results. They are centrally risk minimizers.
Hence, I think
> they will nearly always move to try to standardize performance to make its
> results predictable. They may some day be dragged kicking and screaming
> into the world of swirling innovation, but I don't think that
> will be soon.
I agree, John. I also think it's appropriate in some cases and not in
others. If the work is of a configured nature simply because no one has
taken the time to study it, then it's probably a target for work study and
it will cease being of a configured nature once that study is complete.
That, after all, is the essence of what Frederick Winslow Taylor did. When
he began studying work, it was almost all of a configured nature and the
individual worker pretty much did as he saw fit. Taylor changed all that.
> I look down Fred's third column and I think he is trying to suggest that
> this, more than we think, is what the world of work and organizations is
> coming to. Well, maybe. You could certainly find eddies in
> organizational life about which you could say yes to most of the
characteristics
> in Fred's thind column.
>
> But thinking in more modal terms about the way I think things still are, I
> find myself saying that the suggestion that work is now largely
> "configured," that "custom" products are what we should expect to
> be making, that "commitment" is the primary principle of control (if
> anything we are closer now to the 1920s than the 1960s), that the
individual
> worker is much more than the focus of a wide array of usually overpowering
> systemes and forces, that "results" are what workers are being asked for
> (I think it's more compliance with the organizational culture and
established
> modes), and that doing it faster, better, cheaper is the way to compete
> successfully (I think Microsoft alone demonstrates that marketing will
often
> triumph over all) are all things about which I have my doubts.
Again, we agree, John. I don't think most work is of a configured nature.
I do think that much more of it is of a configured nature than was once the
case and I also believe that it requires a different management approach but
it's hardly the dominant kind of work around. It is, however, increasingly
at the center of the kind of work that determines an organization's fate in
a world where innovation decides that fate. In terms of value, it's become
increasingly important.
> They look like the components of an advocacy model by someone like Tom
> Peters (I do not follow him closely but he seems nowadays nearly to be
> advising both throw away products and organizations) but they do not
> describe very accurately the organizational world I see.
>
> Still I think Fred's thinking here is to which it is worth paying
> attention.
>
> He is describing some features of the economy, or organizations
> and of work that are emerging. It's not clear to me how the move to a
global
> economy is affecting the trend that Fred sees. Initially, it seems to
have enabled
> managment to hold on to some traditional notions of control and to pay
> downright nostalgic wages, but on the world stage I do not yet see much of
> Fred's third column.
Agreed. Indeed, I think what is happening is that much of the repetitive
(e.g., manufacturing) and even the adaptive (e.g., programming) work is
being not just outsourced but also off-shored. That is a driving force in
what I see as a great leveling of standards of living going on around the
world. There are two huge populations in India and China that are taking on
more and more of the first two kinds of work. Those populations are every
bit as intelligent and industrious as ours and the two of them alone will
play central roles in that leveling.
> My central question for him is how should we treat his insights here.
Treat them as observations about three different kinds of work, the mix of
the three, and the implications for management of managing that mix and a
shifting mix at that.
> The thrust of the arguments seems to press us toward seeing that the world
of
> work may now be importantly depicted in his third column (he acknowledges
> that all three still exist).
Again, I think it's the mix and managing that mix that is the central issue.
> What, Fred, are the mistakes we are likely to make if we do not
acknowledge
> adequately the characterizations of the third column?
We will not manage that category of work and work system as effectively as
those who do address it. The costs of that failure should be self evident.
> What is the evidence that we need much to move into that world?
Probably the best evidence consists of the writings of Peter Drucker and
some few others who have been tracking the shift to knowledge. Labor
statistics offer some clues as to the size and patterns of the shift.
But it's not just the shift to knowledge work that's involved; it's also the
shift in political power and the shift to a global economy. I don't pretend
to fully grasp the ramifications of any one of the three, let alone all
three and certainly not in an integrated way. It just seems to me that
these are three big things going on around us and we ought to be paying more
attention to them than it seems to me is the case.
Regards,
Fred Nickols, CPT
Distance Consulting
"Assistance at a Distance"
nickols@att.net
www.nickols.us