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[Date Added :
07/12/2010
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Before the advent of the digital working environment, knowledge work used to generate a variety of markers and visible 'sign posts.' That visibility was important in several ways that weren't evident until they disappeared:
- Seeing work-in-progress in front of knowledge worker made it possible to gauge progress and make connections between disparate elements of the work.
- Different physical representations helped to quickly establish how 'appropriate' a particular idea was.
- Physically shared workspaces supported rich social interactions that enriched the final deliverables and contributed to the learning of multiple individuals connected to the effort.
For all the productivity gains that accrue to the digitization of knowledge work, one unintended consequence has been to make the execution of knowledge work essentially invisible, making it harder to manage and improve such work. The benefits of visibility are now something that we need to seek mindfully instead of getting them for free from the work environment.
Invisibility is an accidental and little-recognized characteristic of digital knowledge work. Seeing the problem is the first step to a solution. While better technology tools will play an important role, the next steps are changes in attitude and behavior at the individual and work group level.
Systems developers have learned that time invested in naming standards and conventions pays off. Teams crafting knowledge-work products should make the same investments. Better yet, spend time with good development teams and look for ways to adapt their practices to more general-knowledge work.
New disciplines take time to become habits. Fortunately, they also eventually become "the way we do work here." As the disciplines take root, taking a more aggressive look at technology tools becomes appropriate. Many of the office suite tools offer some form of internal revision tracking or auditing tools. What's missing is any systematic way to integrate these tools into a disciplined practice. The capabilities are there but they are irrelevant if they aren't used intelligently. A version control system doesn't do anything until you incorporate it into the routine practice of creating a new document.
The right starting point is to simply make the flow of work more visible. This is one of the underlying attractions of social networking and micro-blogging. They promise to restore some visibility to digital teamwork that was lost in the first generation of tools.
(extract from "Managing the Visibility of Knowledge Work," by Jim McGee, Fast Forward Blog, June 23, 2010. Copyright 2010 Fast Forward Blog) |
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