A great quote, I think from Scott Belsky:
In a knowledge economy it doesn’t make sense to use time as a measurement for a job well done. Knowledge work requires a different set of assumptions about productivity. It requires fluidity (ideas can happen at any time), concentration (being rested and engaged is more important than being on the clock), and creativity (regardless of the hour).
Some helpful points from Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management
“Real work is what advances your business or your job” (69). It uses your skills to the full and often takes you out of the comfort zone. It is challenging by nature, and thus meets with some resistance in your mind.
Busy work is “what you do in order to avoid doing the real work.”
Real work involves lots of planning and thinking; for that reason, busy work often looks more like real work, because it is more immediate and you are rushing around looking busy. Sitting quietly and thinking, on the other hand, does not look like real work.
Doing work that someone else could do is also busy work.
Signs that you have fallen into the trap of busy work:
If there is one chief misunderstanding about productivity, it’s that productivity is mainly about getting more things done faster.
But in reality, productivity is just as much about (or, even more so about) doing things better than doing things faster.
Getting less done, but doing it of higher quality, is often more useful, significant, and hence “productive” for your organization and the world.
Actually, schools tend to teach almost nothing on how to do knowledge work — that is, on the actual process for high performance workflow management (as opposed to the specific skill sets for various jobs, such as creating financial statements, etc., etc., which is taught in abundance).
Here are three things that you especially never hear, but are true:
Here are 6 great points I recently came across, summarizing Peter Drucker on what makes knowledge work different from (and more challenging than) manual work:
- “Knowledge worker productivity demands that we ask the question: “What is the task?”
- It demands that we impose the responsibility for their productivity on the individual knowledge workers themselves. Knowledge workers have to manage themselves. They have to have autonomy.
- Continuing innovation has to be part of the work, the task and the responsibility of knowledge workers.
- Knowledge work requires continuous learning on the part of the knowledge worker, but equally continuous teaching on the part of the knowledge worker.
- Productivity of the knowledge worker is not – at least not primarily – a matter of the quantity of output. Quality is at least as important.
- Finally, knowledge worker productivity requires that the knowledge worker is both seen and treated as an ‘asset’ rather than a ‘cost’. It requires that knowledge workers want to work for the organization in preference to all other opportunities.”
Here’s the key point, and the key challenge: Knowledge workers must manage themselves. The manager can only be a source of help, not a boss.
This creates an incredible opportunity and challenge for us as knowledge workers. The challenge is that it means that we need to know how to manage ourselves now more than ever, which does not necessarily come naturally (which is one reason I wrote my book). But the opportunity is that knowledge work by definition presents a great opportunity to unleash your creativity and innovation and unique interests.
This also presents a challenge for organizations, however. Many organizations that consist of knowledge workers still manage their people as if they are doing manual work. This is why you still see tightly controlled leadership and management practices.
The news flash is that these approaches kill knowledge work. Organizations cannot take their management cues from how management was done in the industrial era (I’m not saying even manual work should have been managed in that way, but it’s even worse with knowledge work). Every organization needs to be built on the recognition that their people, especially their knowledge workers (which is most of the workforce today), must be given ownership in their tasks and be allowed to manage themselves.
(By the way, if you are reading this blog, you are a knowledge worker; also, even if your “paid” job consists in manual work, we are all knowledge workers in our personal and home lives.)
Drucker:
Throughout history, the great majority of people never had to ask the question.
What should I contribute? They were told what to contribute, and their tasks were dictated either by the work itself as it was for the peasant or artisan — or by a master or a mistress — as it was for domestic servants. And until very recently, it was taken for granted that most people were subordinates who did as they were told. Even in the 1950s and 1960s, the new knowledge workers (the so- called organization men) looked to their company’s personnel department to plan their careers.
Then in the late 1960s, no one wanted to be told what to do any longer. Young men and women began to ask. What do / want to do? And what they heard was that the way to contribute was to “do your own thing.” But this solution was as wrong as the organization men’s had been. Very few of the people who believed that doing one’s own thing would lead to contribution, self-fulfilment, and success achieved any of the three.
But still, there is no return to the old answer of doing what you are told or assigned to do. Knowledge workers in particular have to learn to ask a question that has not been asked before: What should my contribution be? To answer it, they must address three distinct elements: What does the situation require? Given my strengths, my way of performing, and my values, how can I make the greatest contribution to what needs to be done? And finally, What results have to be achieved to make a difference?
Consider the experience of a newly appointed hospital administrator. The hospital was big and prestigious, but it had been coasting on its reputation for 30 years. The new administrator decided that his contribution should be to establish a standard of excellence in one important area within two years. He chose to focus on the emergency room, which was big, visible, and sloppy. He decided that every patient who came into the ER had to be seen by a qualified nurse within 60 seconds. Within 12 months, the hospital’s emergency room had become a model for all hospitals in the United States, and within another two years, the whole hospital had been trans- formed.
As this example suggests, it is rarely possible — or even particularly fruitful — to look too far ahead. A plan can usually cover no more than 18 months and still be reasonably clear and specific. So the question in most cases should be. Where and how can I achieve results that will make a difference within the next year and a half? The answer must balance several things. First, the results should be hard to achieve — they should require “stretching,” to use the current buzzword.
But also, they should be within reach. To aim at results that cannot be achieved — or that can be only under the most unlikely circumstances — is not being ambitious; it is being foolish. Second, the results should be meaningful.
They should make a difference. Finally, results should be visible and, if at all possible, measurable. From this will come a course of action: what to do, where and how to start, and what goals and deadlines to set.
On Wednesday I asked what one thing about Getting Things Done you found to be most helpful. Thank you so much for all of your thoughts (both in the comments and by email). They have been really helpful!
Here is one comment from a reader that I especially wanted to highlight:
The whole concept/category of “knowledge work” was really helpful—never heard or thought along those lines previously. It helped to clarify practically why I struggle the way I do with productivity (my own heart issues obviously not addressed).
I wondered why I felt so incredibly productive in seminary and, well, the total opposite in ministry. Seminary was incredibly challenging, but it was so simple: just do what the professors assigned. All my tasks were clearly spelled out. Not so in ministry. As a self-employed “knowledge worker” with nobody handing me a syllabus, I was in quite a different position, and up to that point, I wasn’t able to clearly articulate why I felt so unproductive.
The label didn’t cure me—just clarified the problem. It helped to realize that I probably wasn’t the only one struggling.
I love this comment because of how it gets at one of the core challenges that I think many people in ministry experience — namely, the transition from seminary to full-time ministry and work.
This is the transition that actually got me interested in productivity in the first place. I went through seminary pretty fast — at one point I took 48 hours (= 16 classes) in a 9 month period. I did this without using a planner or even calendar (although I did write down a list of assignments once). One semester I completed all of my assignments within the first six weeks, and then had the rest of the semester almost entirely free from obligations (other than going to class; I used the time to work more and, I think, do more reading or something). I had never even heard of David Allen, and life worked great.
But then we moved back to Minneapolis (we had been at Southern Seminary in Louisville) and I started full-time at Desiring God. And my first task was not so small: launch a nationwide radio program while managing the church and conference bookstores at the same time. I found that my default practices for productivity just didn’t work. I realized I had to be more intentional and deliberate about how I got things done.
I had always read a lot. My focus up to that point had almost exclusively been theology. So I said to myself, “I’ll try to do the same thing with productivity — I’ll find some key books to read and try to develop an overall approach and system to keep track of what I have to do and stay focused on what is most important.”
At Desiring God, some people were reading Getting Things Done. So I picked that up. I also noticed that in the employee handbook for the church that they encouraged the use of Franklin Planners and would even pay $50 a year for you to get one and replace the pages each year. So I got one of those as well. This led to developing my own approach that merged what I took to be the best insights from David Allen and Stephen Covey, along with some of my own thinking.
Anyway, that’s how I got into productivity. I think the struggle I had is something that many other people also have experienced and continue to experience. And that’s why I resonate with Andrew’s comment above so much
From Drucker in The Effective Executive:
The knowledge worker cannot be supervised closely or in detail. He can only be helped. But he must direct himself, and he must direct himself toward performance and contribution, that is, toward effectiveness.
Further:
The motivation of the knowledge worker depends on his being effective, on his being able to achieve. If effectiveness is lacking in his or her work, his commitment to work and to contribution will soon wither, and he will become a time-server going through the motions from 9-5.
From Peter Drucker’s Management Challenges for the 21st Century:
- Knowledge worker productivity demands that we ask the question: “What is the task?”
- It demands that we impose the responsibility for their productivity on the individual knowledge workers themselves. Knowledge workers have to manage themselves. They have to have autonomy.
- Continuing innovation has to be part of the work, the task and the responsibility of the knowledge workers.
- Knowledge work requires continuous learning on the part of the knowledge worker, but equally continuous teaching on the part of the knowledge worker.
- Productivity of the knowledge worker is not — at least not primarily — a matter of the quantity of output. Quality is at least as important.
- Finally, knowledge-worker productivity requires that the knowledge worker is both seen and treated as an “asset” rather than a “cost.” It requires that knowledge workers want to work for the organization in preference to all other opportunities.
A good quote from Google CEO Eric Schmidt:
Knowledge workers believe they are paid to be effective, not to work 9 to 5.
The quote is from Andy Crouch’s culture making blog. The post itself contains an interesting comparison between Saddleback Church’s campus and Google’s headquarters as an expression of the overarching role of culture in shaping architecture.