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Understanding Work Process To Help People Work More Effectively
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"The primary resource in the post-capitalist society will be knowledge and the leading social groups will be 'knowledge workers," Peter Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society.
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Knowledge Is The Most Important Product
It's a typical Monday morning at Savvy Systems, Inc. Tom is pit-stopped at his desk, checking his e-mail before rushing off to meet a client. Mary is deep in concentration, working on the development of a new software program. Ann, Bill and Sara are gathered around a table, charts and storyboards spread out in front of them. Jack is upstairs in the library. Rick and Antonio wrap up an animated conversation at Rick's desk and head off in opposite directions, laptops in hand. In the conference room down the hall Jan and Carla are engaged in a conference call with a consultant 1000 miles away. Telephones are ringing. Voice mail is picking up. Printers are whirring, a fax clicks over the line. Joe from customer service stops by to talk about a rebate program he's proposing. His beeper rings..... he picks up the nearest phone...
This is knowledge work. The way it's accomplished constitutes a new work process.
Today, fewer and fewer workers create physical things. Knowledge is the product of the contemporary office and information is the primary raw material.
A knowledge worker is a person whose primary function in the daily performance of his or her job is analyzing, creating, deciding, collaborating and acting on information. |
The process by which information is translated into knowledge is quite unlike the office work process we have known in the past. It is non-linear, multi-layered, multi-tasked, and collaborative. Work flows; it doesn't march in formation. People work independently and they work together in groups, small and large, in permanent teams and in ad-hoc task forces. The barriers in the office are permeable. Work done in one area informs and impacts work in other areas; information is shared between divisions and departments and over vast distances. Information technology links it all together.
Work Process is what workers do, how they do it, when they do it, where they do it and the tools they use to do it.
Work content varies by individual. Some people spend most of their working time performing a single kind of work. Many more people spend time doing a variety of activities.
The new work process is often dependent upon information technology. Virtually everyone in the office requires access to the electronic tools that keep the office humming.
The knowledge-work process demands high levels of interaction and individual autonomy. There's more communication and collaboration on every level in the office than ever before; more emphasis on learning and less on training. There is also more individual choice in how, when and where tasks are performed and more individual responsibility for outcomes, which are the true measures of the productivity of knowledge work.
Knowledge work is not limited by time or place. Hours spent in the office may vary, from person to person and from day to day. Knowledge work is done in private offices, at workspaces, around tables in common spaces, in conference rooms, lounges, cafeterias, on airplanes and at home. In short, work happens in a lot of different places. |
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It's Not Academic - New Planning Concepts for a New Work Process
"Those who actually do a job know more about it than anyone else.... To find out how to improve productivity, quality and performance, ask the people who do the job," Peter Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society.
More often than not, office planning has been based on the organizational chart and a view of the office workers as a "unit of production." Typically, people at the top of the organization worked in large, private offices; people at mid levels worked in smaller, less private spaces; and people at lower levels on the chart worked in white-collar versions of the assembly line.
It's a simple fact that today the physical facilities in which people do their work often doesn't support the work that they do. The knowledge-producing office calls for new planning and product applications based on how people work and who they work with.
New ways of working require different kinds of places to work. Work environments that help people work effectively must not be determined by job titles, but should be looked at within the context of the work they perform and who they work with.
In the quest for change, corporate structures are becoming less pyramidal and more participate. Traditional hierarchies are being displaced by networked organizations. These structures require different planning approaches.
Understanding work context and planning for it, not around it, means listening much more closely to people who do the work. |
"Abandoning the idea that filling a position implies occupying one single place does not happen easily. Because people are accustomed to equating status with an office of a certain location and size, they cling to this equation even when it is not longer suitable. Over and over again, managers appoint committees or engage consultants to do the impossible, namely, take the company organization chart and translate it into an optimal office layout with each person assigned to a single, appropriate location," Phillip J. Stone and Robert Luchetti, "Your office Is Where You Are," Harvard Business Review, March - April 1985.
We know, for example that people working many hours a day creating and analyzing need worksettings that provide high visual and acoustical privacy to protect against interruption; while settings for people primarily engaged in tasks that don't require that level of concentration (e.g. some routing processing operations) can be more open.
The solution is relatively simple for workers who spend most of their time performing one predominant task. For them a single worksetting designed and planned to support their specific work context may be appropriate. That's the traditional paradigm: one person/one setting.
In the knowledge worker environment people typically wear several hats-performing a number of different tasks over the course of a day. Instead of one person /one setting we must begin thinking in terms of one person/two or three settings-that is, one person working in multiple worksettings to effectively accomplish a day's or a week's work. The interests of space and costs effectiveness suggest a combination of individual and group-owned settings to achieve this objective. |
Teamwork is one hallmark of the new work process. Work environments for teams must provide flexibility and diversity of plan to meet the variety and diversity that characterizes teams themselves: formal and informal; planned and ad hoc; large and small; temporary and permanent; homogeneous and multi-disciplinary. Team settings imply conventional conference rooms and project rooms - as well as an entire range of other less structured, more flexible spaces outfitted with movable and adaptable furniture and tools that support the way individual teams work.
"A team is a group of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable." Katzenbach and Smith, The Wisdom of Teams
Creative high performance teams seem to work best in a combination of collocated private space (for supporting creating and analyzing) and group spaces (for promoting communication.) This "caves and commons" approach is characteristic of European architectural design.
Location matters. Planning work environments that really work for the people who inhabit them means putting them in the right place. People who collaborate need to be in proximity to each other and to the team spaces they share. They must be collocated. |
Collocation is the positioning of individual and teamwork settings in sufficient proximity to one another to allow productive interaction.
Information technology has changed the definition of "place" in "workplace". Today it is entirely possible to put in a full day's work, maintaining contact and sharing information with one's co-workers, and never step inside the office at all. Time spent in the office is an important variable for the design and planning of office worksettings.
If a person spends most of his or her time in the office it's almost certain they'll need some kind of individually owned home base. If they work on multiple teams in various locations, it will be important to provide places for them to connect with others they work with. They will need a place to put their things, utilize computers; phones and copy machines, spread work out, and even socialize. |
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In Closing - Or is this really the beginning?
The way people work has changed.
Some people are out of the office more than they are in. Some people work alone - others work with others. Most use technology - but their needs can vary and fluctuate.
It sounds simple. A well-planned work environment needs effectively to support the people who do the work. Organizational job titles and someone's location on the corporate ladder should not be the sole criteria for the size or appearance of their workspace.
There is a lot to consider.
Begin at the beginning - ask, listen and watch the people who do the work. |
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