Applying Technology to Knowledge Work

I just read an interesting McKinsey Quarterly article by Tom Davenport, "Rethinking Knowledge Work: A Strategic Approach." You'll have to register with McKinsey to read the article.  It's worth the effort.  Tom has been studying knowledge management for at least 20 years.  He is a Professor at Babson College.

The article discusses two approaches to providing technology support to knowledge workers:

• the free-access approach in which organizations provide knowledge workers with a set of tools and let them choose which ones to use for different tasks.  These tools typically include the internet, internal KM and collaboration systems (e.g., SharePoint), and business intelligence systems.
• the structured approach provides knowledge workers with specific information to support a task or deliverable.  These tools include document management and workflow management or business process automation systems.

While the free access approach is great for worker autonomy it can lead to reduced productivity by increasing search costs and adding distractions to work.  The structured approach in contrast can improve productivity and also reduce autonomy and job satisfaction.

Davenport goes onto introduce a two by two matrix (a classic tool for management researchers) to help map the approach that us best suited for different types of work.  He breaks work out into individual versus collaborative and routine versus interpretive.  Consider a collaborative/routine task like approving a large purchase order.  You might want a structured workflow management system to support this task.  The key is making the process as efficient as possible so that purchases could be approved in a timely manner.  There's not a great need for free access to information to support this process.

As we help organizations apply knoweldge management and business intelligence systems to make their knowledge workers more productive, I'm sure I'll refer to this framework to both inform recommendations to our clients and to explain why we're suggesting a specific technology to solve a problem.