Theme2 - Weekly Digest: First Week
11-Nov-02
This month’s theme-based community is tackling the issue about Motivating Knowledge Workers.
Paper by Dr. A.D. Amar
Reward The Psyche To Motivate The Mind: The Formula For Higher Innovation And Productivity From Knowledge Workers
A.D. Amar, Ph.D., professor with the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University (South Orange, NJ 07079, USA), asserts that knowledge work needs worker intellect for its execution and not his motor function, as does the traditional work. In fact, traditional work primarily needs cognitive skills and motor functions knowledge work is heavily dependent on the employees’ intellect.
But traditional rewards do not work in motivating the mind. While they may succeed in holding knowledge workers in their jobs, they cannot assure innovation and high performance on knowledge work.
Thus, to motivate knowledge workers, managers have to reward their psyche from where the intellect emerges. There are no set rules or generalized rewards to motivate knowledge workers, but there is a set of principles that should guide the design and administration of rewards to motivate the mind.
These principles are:
- The Physiology-Sociology-Psychology Integration Principle
- The No-Generality Principle
- The Sense of In-Control Principle
- The Extended Reward Span Principle
- The Self Rewarding Principle
The effectiveness of rewards for the psyche is expected to rise substantially if these five principles are properly followed.
Due to the customized nature of these rewards, the best ones are those that are designed by the manager in-charge after considering the individual, the situation and the time.
Week’s comments
Bill Jensen: “What *Really* Matters to Knowledge Workers”
Bill Jensen (CEO of The Jensen Group, whose mission is to ‘help clients succeed simply by changing how they organize and deliver what they know’) wrote that most all knowledge workers, but especially those working in the field of technology, are looking for four key things which will both retain and motivate them, and develop their career paths. The following are in rank-order, 1 being most important, 2 next important, etc.
- 1. Great Projects
- 2. Great People
- 3. Great Place to Work
- 4. Wow Experience
The findings above are a small slice of findings from the research that he has been doing for a decade now.
Quote of the week
"Knowledge Management is the planning, organisation, leading and supporting of employees (knowledge workers) and their related activities (knowledge work). [...] A structured, systematic and integrated approach to manage knowledge (defined as capability to act) within a corporate network in a holistic manner." by Chris Macrae.
Results from the first week’s poll
The question asked in the first week’s poll was “How much should knowledge workers count on ICT to improve their job performance?”
74 people have voted and the results are follows:
49% of the people who responded to the poll said that ICT is quite important to improve knowledge workers performance;
27% of the people who responded to the poll said that ICT counts very much to improve knowledge workers performance;
18% of the people who responded to the poll said that ICT is not so much important to improve knowledge workers performance;
7% of the people who responded to the poll said that ICT is not important to improve knowledge workers performance.
This week’s agenda
On Monday, 11 November 2002, 11am CET, Mr. Huub Rutten- Sopheon, gives the first keynote presentation in the second theme-based community. The presentation is entitled “The Embedded Knowledge Worker- How to make the knowledge worker a spider in its web”.
On Monday, 11 November 2002, 4pm CET, Mr. Hubb Rutten-Sopheon will hold a workshop online.
On Wednesday, 13 November 2002, from 1.00pm to 5.00pm CET,offline workshop at the Europe KM 2002(London): “Motivating the knowledge workers: technology, rewarding and beyond”
Future weeks agenda
Week 3: 18/11/02 – 22/11/2002
- Tuesday- 19/11/2002
Online newsletter about the activities and outcomes of the second week. - Wednesday- 20/11/2002 (11 a.m. CET)
Online keynote presentation by Mr. Luca Gambetti, Gruppo Formula: Models of Excellence and Organisational Alignment – How the self-assessment can improve the people motivation and the decisions-making process. - Thursday 21st November - (2 p.m. CET)
Online workshop with Mr. Luca Gambetti, Gruppo Formula
Week 4: 25/11/02 – 29/11/2002
- Tuesday- 26/11/2002
Online newsletter about the activities and outcomes of the third week. - Wednesday - 27.11.2002 (11.00am CET)
Online keynote presentation by Mrs. Edna Pasher:
“Leading organizations where work is fun” - Thursday - 28.11.2002(11.00am CET)
Online workshop with Mrs. Edna Pasher
Details
- Author:
- Angelica Coviello
- Publisher:
- KnowledgeBoard
- Date:
- 11-Nov-02
- Categories:
- Implementation
- Sections:
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Member comments (5)
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Competition on who came up with the definition of KM
Angelica-
I am beginning to have a horrible feeling that I may have plagiarised 3 people's phrases in rolling out with that definition of KM. I will have to dig through whose quotes I have taken words from. Meanwhile if any of our friends at K'board recognise some of the words as theirs- please come and reclaim them
I usually do a better job at sourcing but scribbled that particular flow of words almost subconciously after reading several great KM books recently including those of:
Amidon (2002)
McElroy (2002)
St Onge (2002)
and re-reading parts of 2 golden oldies
Sveiby (1997)
McMaster (1996?)
Thanks Chris for your positive comments
Thanks Chris for your positive comments on our work. I hope to provide a interesting inputs to trigger a fruitful discussion in the community about knowledge workers motivation.
I apologize for the gaffe in ascribing to you the KM definition. I found it in your interesting proposal of a KM definition exercise ( here) without any reference and I supposed it was yours. It was my mistake to not note that was a quotation.
I love too this KM definition because it describes a sort of integration of plans and actions conceived by the organisation and addressed to people (knowledge workers). Because, in my humble opinion, people (with their knowledge, experiences, expectations and acts) should be the focus and the main assets of the organisation’s strategic planning.
Please, may you provide me with some details about the KM definition you quoted?
Thanks again and see you soon in London.
Angelica
KM festivities in London
Can I suggest that if you are coming to a meeting with George Por in London next week - or even if you not - you consider tabling your most important question at
http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=96198&d=1&h=417&f=56&dateformat=%o%20%B%20%Y
Provisional Meeting Diary with George Por next week (RSVP if you want to join up):
18th Complexity Conference 2.00-6.00 at London School of Economics- George, Lilly Evans attending.
18th 7.00 pm
John Caswell, George, Chris Macrae, Lilly? John Moore? meet at LSE Reception or leave note where you are
19th Breakfast 8.00am
breakfast at Waldorf Hotel Palm Court! suggest 8.00?
Lilly, George, Chris, Thomas Power
Webs etc
Thomas Power www.ecademy.com 13500 and largest Alexa rated network in knowledge specialisatin in current commercialisation activities related to web and net
John Caswell www.grouppartners.net provides a forum to tapping into 20 years of meta-disciplinary expertise acquired by mapping systems and processes at boardroom level
Chris Macrae and John Moore edit sigs at K'board connecting emotional intelligence and trust (launching this week) to KM http://www.knowledgeboard.com/community/zones/sig/kmei.html We also host webs on transparency and creativity at www.valuetrue.com and www.roundourhouse.com
Please feel free to add in your own webs if you pose your important knowledge quesstion
George Por http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/research/
CoIL’s research interest is quite broad; it is driven by a fundamental curiosity about the dynamic interplay of emergent processes in and across four domains of innovation:
SOCIAL innovation
BUSINESS innovation
KNOWLEDGE innovation
TECHNICAL innovation
We believe when individuals and organizations understand and appreciate better the huge evolutionary forces at play in the current metasystem transition, they will be able to use better the tailwind of those forces for adding velocity to their innovation projects. The specific questions that we worked on in the past 20 years, and have an ongoing interest in, are inspired by that evolutionary perspective
CoIL’s research interest is quite broad; it is driven by a fundamental curiosity about the dynamic interplay of emergent processes in and across four domains of innovation:
SOCIAL innovation
BUSINESS innovation
KNOWLEDGE innovation
TECHNICAL innovation
We believe when individuals and organizations understand and appreciate better the huge evolutionary forces at play in the current metasystem transition, they will be able to use better the tailwind of those forces for adding velocity to their innovation projects. The specific questions that we worked on in the past 20 years, and have an ongoing interest in, are inspired by that evolutionary perspective
wow!
Thank you for this wonderful summary, and I hope everyone else is enjoying this rich mix as much as I am.
I must point out that whilst I love the definition of KM you ascribed to me, I think I was quoting someone else. As soon as I find out whom I will correct this. Apologies there are a few broken junctions in my own knowledge at the moment because I'm trying to work on 10 things at the same time and not doing any the knowledge justice they truly deserve. It's funny how a lot of the greatest virtual conversations also take place in real time...I pray for your kind understanding if you are looking at this thread retrospectively...
a vision meriting 1000 conversations
Debra Amidon has sent us this wonderful slide to discuss and question. I believe her vision of Knowledge=Innovation Highway is the most wonderful I have read (other nominations are of course welcome)
http://forum.knowledgeboard.com/upload/5thGeneration.gif
Chris,
Please share with us what makes you so excited about this matrix?
I'm not sure I catch all the subtle implied meaning behind those cells.
Denham Grey
Denham
First, I am a knowledge outsider so of course I'd really like to listen to views of others but..
Reading the new crop of books - Amidon, St Onge, McElroy, -
I see that Knowledge as these books scope is taking a quantum leap forward from average KM practice we still have
I see the 6 dimensions (rows) as dynamics that I believe a whole "connectivity" leap needs to be made in both in KM and all intangibles and human related disciplines. Unless we make the leap, governance will continue to be non-transparent and through accounting numbers separatist of value and trust-flow. If we fail , we will stagnate human capital and social capital.
In particular I see:
row 1 as talking about moving forward from silos, diseases where disciplines dont connect and dont share knowledge
row 2 about moving from assumption you can plan change to having a preferred future and seizing the changes that comae along and help web your pattern -
row 3 moving from pre-digital to networked age organisation
row 4 moving towards valuing people in the way sveiby and drucker suggests; nobody can completely manage a knowledge worker's network; give them the system flows and open governance maps to be co-responsible
row 5 looks like moving toward learning organisational and system dynamics
row 6 makes technology the inspiration servant of people's knowledge rather than people slaves to technology's designed-in dictations
So I see many good things in parallel that need coupling as an unstoppable force and if that what KM does , I want it and want to shout about applauding its systematic progress, because this is why I thought new economy and new society could connect all our human capabilities to a higher level of doing valuable stuff by the people for the people, in global as well as local collaborations
chris macrae, wcbn007@easynet.co.uk
www.valuetrue.com Transparency Mapping