Resumen Thinking For a Living.

Thinking for a Living Book Reading

Objective

The objective of this assignment is to a critical analysis of the book Thinking for a Living on the lines of Information and Knowledge Management. This book was written by Thomas H. Davenport

Book Description

This book originally written in 2005 talks about the approaches, techniques and ideas to manage Knowledge workers in an organizational setting. This book highlights the diminishing and unsuccessful trend of managing employees in the Industrial age method. The book comprises of nine chapters. The chapters 1-3 try to establish some introduction to Knowledge intensive companies’ jobs, Knowledge Worker profiles & their characteristics and Knowledge economy in general. The subsequent chapters 4-9 are observations and suggestions given by the author based on the series of research studies mainly catering to Knowledge Work Processes, Organizational Technology, Knowledge Worker Capabilities, Working Environments and Management of Knowledge Workers.

Here is a breakdown summary of the book by chapter. The reader’s critique is also provided for each chapter with key points.

Chapter 1 - What’s a Knowledge Worker, Anyway?

Summary

This chapter gives an introduction to knowledge work and knowledge worker from a beginner’s viewpoint. It creates a basement on which the subsequent chapters are built.

Key Points

There is an interesting mention of the term ‘Market to Book Value’ in connection to Knowledge intensive companies. The insight is that the market’s perception of the value of knowledge and knowledge workers in these companies is higher than the book values (tangible assets) indicating that knowledge as intellectual capital is most important to these companies. (Pg 4-5) The snippet “How Many Are There?” is about the US Bureau of Labor Statistics(BLS) classifies its workers and gives a good indication on the profile(Management, Business and Financial Operations, Healthcare practitioners to name a few) and number of people involved in Knowledge Worker type jobs contributing to about 30% of the total workforce in 2003. The snippet also provides similar information from UK, to re-iterate the fact that knowledge workers form a substantial part of the current day workforce and the numbers will steadily increase moving into the decade. (Pg 5-7)

A business case of KM is raised by the author after coming to the conclusion of his research on Business Process that the most important processes for organizations today involve Knowledge work (Pg 9)

The author offers a critique to the original definition of Knowledge Worker by Peter Drucker. He claims that Drucker’s definition mistakenly involves jobs of taxi drivers, movies ticket takers and ditch diggers and also implies that the definition refers to only one knowledge workers per job per organization. (Pg 12)

The author provides clear elucidation of Knowledge Worker characteristics. Some excerpts are given below

1. Many people use knowledge in their jobs and have some degree of education and expertise, but for knowledge workers the role of knowledge must be central to the job
2. Despite a few necessary shadings in the definition of knowledge workers, it’s clear that organizational success depends on the innovativeness and productivity of these workers within their organizations.
3. Knowledge workers are dispersed across the organizational structure and the globe, yet the interdependence and complexity of their work requires them to collaborate effectively with others in different functions, physical locations, time zones and even organizations. (Pg 12)

The author at the end of the chapter gives some basic principles and observations about knowledge workers. Some of them are Knowledge Workers like autonomy, Knowledge workers usually have good reasons for what they do, Knowledge workers value their knowledge and don’t share it easily to showcase the implication that knowledge workers can’t be managed in the traditional sense, a claim that he had made in the start of the chapter.

Personal Critique

I thought this chapter was pretty good. It is quite informative for both KM students and other general reader.  In the section ‘Knowledge Workers as a Class’, the author could have avoided taking a jibe at another person who doesn’t believe in having separate management methods for knowledge workers.

Chapter 2 – How Knowledge Workers Differ and the Difference it Makes

Summary

This chapter makes distinctions about the different types of Knowledge Workers and their characteristics. The distinction is based on 1.) Judgement and Collaboration 2.) Knowledge Activity 3.) Type of Idea 4) Cost and Scale 5.) Process Attributes 6.) Business Criticallity 7.) Mobility.

Key Points

 An excellent classification structure for knowledge-intensive processes based on the dimensions ‘Level of Interdependence’ and ‘Complexity of Work’ rated from low to high, is provided. As per the structure, four main models are identified as 1.) Transaction model 2.) Expert model 3.) Integration model and 4.)Collaboration model. Four main activities of Knowledge Workers are identified as Creation, Packaging, Distribution and Application of knowledge. The author opines that Knowledge creation is the toughest with few examples. (Pg 28-30)

There is a distinction drawn between big and small ideas and a prediction is made – The organizations that will be most successful in the future will be those in which it’s everyone’s job to creating and using both big and small ideas. An example involving the company Chaparral Steel is made to showcase the kind of success that even an industrial company can achieve when its employees are made to consistently as a part of their job definition (Pg 31) The author talks about the difficulties in measuring certain knowledge work processes (eg: patent search and filings, market research) in contrast to the ones that can be measured (eg: medical coding) and also states the importance of measurement in today’s competitive world. (Pg 33) There is reference made to the book Good Company written by Don Cohen and Larry Prusak on the point that mobile work doesn’t build social capital or social networks. (Pg 34)

Personal Critique

Continuing with the good introduction in ch1, the author looks to differentiate knowledge workers again in this chapter and also creates some key distinctions within them. He views KM professionals as distributors of knowledge which is interesting but personally I think KM pros should be seen as purveyors of knowledge. The choice of words with classification of ideas into big and small could have been better.

Chapter 3 – Interventions, Measures and Experiments in Knowledge Work

Summary

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