Helping Knowledge Workers Succeed

Tom Davenport, with extensive experience in knowledge management, provides a strategic approach to rethinking knowledge management in recent McKinsey Quarterly.  The following is quite insaightful for leaders of large project-based knowledge work and initiatives. He notes:

...the matrix in the exhibit very useful when planning technology strategies for knowledge workers. It is based on my experience that knowledge work generally falls into one of four clusters, each with its own characteristics. These four knowledge work classifications are shaped by two factors: the work’s degree of complexity (x-axis) and the level of interdependence among workers who carry out a task (y-axis). Leaders can use this taxonomy as a guide to determine whether a structured, free, or hybrid approach best fits a given job.

The transaction cell of the matrix describes knowledge work requiring relatively low amounts of collaboration and judgment, such as employment in call centers, claims processing, and other administrative-intensive roles. Structured-provision approaches fit this type of work well—indeed, it is the only type where they are commonly applied.

As the degree of collaboration required for a job moves up into the exhibit’s integration cell, free-access tools become widely available. It is common to find work circulating by way of e-mail and voluntary collaboration and much less common to find structured-provision technologies. Yet there are some semistructured exceptions, including lower-level roles in software development, engineering, and product design and development.

In the exhibit’s expert cell, the goal is to apply expert knowledge to tasks or problems. The relevant knowledge traditionally is stored in the expert’s brain, but today many organizations want to supplement it with online knowledge. Although free-access technologies are typically the chief means of accessing it, in some instances structured approaches can be applied, particularly when productivity and online-knowledge access are equally important.

Finally, work in the exhibit’s collaboration cell—which involves knowledge activities such as those of investment bankers crafting big deals, financial analysts creating corporate plans and budgets, marketers developing major marketing plans, attorneys working in teams on large cases, and scientists playing a part in large scientific projects—is usually iterative and unstructured. Typically, the only tools that succeed in such environments provide free access to information and are used voluntarily by the worker. Publish