Whenever you’re reading books or watching presentations on management, two names are bound to show up.
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With kindness comes naïveté. Courage becomes foolhardiness. And dedication has no reward.Archive
Tag: knowledge worker
As you may have guessed from its title, the book First break all the rules is all about breaking conventions in managing people.
One of those widely held conventions is the belief that “Every employee should be treated equally”. The book explains that this should not be the case, especially after taking into consideration the individual talents of your people.
It’s a common story among professionals:
Guy gets a job. Guy is happy because the job is challenging yet fulfilling. To top it off, it pays well.
After a couple of years of hard work, the guy just stops and realizes that he doesn’t really feel fulfilled from working anymore.
By then it’s already too late. That guy has burned out.
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Contrary to what people who haven’t experienced it think, burnout is not merely a case of depression, a severe mood swing, or some other temporary stress related ailment. Nor does it usually culminate in a spectacular fashion, like a person going postal in his workplace.
It’s more like a car which has gone for hundreds of thousands of miles without periodic maintenance. The burned out worker just suddenly breaks down mentally, spiritually, or in some cases, physically. The latter are the lucky ones; sure they get sent to the hospital, but they’re more likely to be diagnosed and treated properly in this situation. Burnout is a condition that ends careers–a person whose will suddenly snaps at work will find it difficult to find someone who can properly asses and deal with their situation. More often than not, those who will come to the person’s aid won’t understand what the person is going through and might even make the condition worse.
Out of the many articles and blog posts I’ve read in 2008, none have been more moving as Jurgen Appelo’s (the SE list guy) Professionalism = Knowledge First, Experience Last.
Do you trust a doctor with diagnosing your mental problems if the doctor tells you he’s got 20 years of experience? Do you still trust that doctor when he picks up a knife and ice picks, and asks you to prepare for a lobotomy?
The article is quite direct when bringing its points forward. I would suggest you read not only the article, but also the rebuttals targeting the weaknesses of his arguments.
Short summary below the cut…
Probably the most important contribution of Peter Drucker to modern management is his study on knowledge workers.
For most of us, the term “knowledge worker” may just be a fancy term for “white collar professional”, people with specialized training tasked to use information for different goals. For example, an engineer uses a client’s requirements to design structures, and a doctor interprets the symptoms of a patient to find the best way to treat the disease. But as Drucker would point out in his writings, most companies do not understand that knowledge workers are fundamentally different from their blue collar counterparts.
Here is a small (and by no means exhaustive) list of things about knowledge workers:
continue reading…
The Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition is a valuable concept in teaching. The idea that people look at problems and new ideas differently depending on their skill level turns on its head the age old approaches to teaching prevalent in “modern” education systems.
Here are the five stages in this model in increasing skill:
- 1. Novice
- “rigid adherence to taught rules or plans”
- no exercise of “discretionary judgment”
- 2. Advanced beginner
- limited “situational perception”
- all aspects of work treated separately with equal importance
- 3. Competent
- “coping with crowdedness” (multiple activities, accumulation of information)
- some perception of actions in relation to goals
- deliberate planning
- formulates routines
- 4. Proficient
- holistic view of situation
- prioritizes importance of aspects
- “perceives deviations from the normal pattern”
- employs maxims for guidance, with meanings that adapt to the situation at hand
- 5. Expert
- transcends reliance on rules, guidelines, and maxims
- “intuitive grasp of situations based on deep, tacit understanding”
- has “vision of what is possible”
- uses “analytical approaches” in new situations or in case of problems
One important thing to note about this model is that it’s not only useful for teaching — it’s actually applicable to almost all phases in the “life cycle” of an employee. The model can affect recruitment, training/initial deployment, up to promotion to senior positions. I will be referencing the model in this context after I discuss the various aspects of Drucker’s “knowledge worker”.
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