The Distributed Mind: Achieving High Performance Through the Collective Intelligence of Knowledge Work Teams

Rating:
Summary: Future trends in knowledge work.
Review: "This is the age of knowledge work. It is the age of the smart worker. The operations that learn the secret of tapping into this knowledge will always outperform those that do not. Those that master the 'collective intelligence' of knowledge work teams will be the architects of the future...As individuals, knowledge workers are smart people. But their individual effectiveness is amplified when they are also part of a smart organization. As an effective knowledge team, they can often create a sort of synergy where the outcome of the whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts. These smart teams appear as though all team members are of a common mind that shares information and ideas seamlessly across the membership-a distributed mind...This book is about knowledge work teams. Knowledge work requires a special set of skills related to an area of expertise, such as those of an engineer, a salesperson, a consultant, a manager, or a health-care professional. But it requires much more than technical competence to be successful as a knowledge worker" (from the Introduction).

In this context, Kimball Fisher and Mareen Duncan Fisher:

* define knowledge work by comparing five characteristics that differ for physical and knowledge work as follows:

- Job Characteristics: (1). Core task, (2). Critical skills, (3). Work process, (4). Work outcome, (5). Knowledge used.

- Job Characteristics of Physical Work: (1). Doing, (2). Physical, (3). Usually linear, (4). Product, (5). Applied.

- Job Characteristics of Knowledge Work: (1). Thinking, (2). Mental, (3). Usually nonlinear, (4). Information, (5). Created.

* argue that "the nature of work is changing from mostly linear to mostly nonlinear and from requiring mainly physical skills to requiring mainly mental acuity. Jobs now usually produce more information than product and require more improvisation than rote, automatic application of process. While this trend is dramatic in a few cases, for most of us the change has been a slow, steady evolution of our jobs", and illustrate this trend.

* show how teams and team-based operations differ from groups and non-team-based operations, and illustrate how these teams differ from the traditional organizations by comparing hierarchical organizations with team-based organizations as follows:

- Hierarchical Organization: hierarchical order, local optimum, maximum specification, functional defect control, specialized skill, vertical information flow, work ethic value, and conservative improvement.

- Team-Based Organization: information order, global optimum, minimum critical specification, source defect control, multiskilled, source information flow, work life value, and continuous improvement.

* illustrate the differences between physical and knowledge work teams by comparing typical physical work teams with knowledge work teams.

- Typical Physical Work Teams: physical labor, multiple generalists, inside single organization, fairly stable membership, and repetitive responsibilities.

- Typical Knowledge Work Teams: mental labor, multiple specialists, across multiple organizations, shifting membership, and single-purpose responsibilities.

* explore the process of knowledge work design, and illustrate the characteristics of evolving organizational form-learning lattice organization.

* discuss the metaphors and practices needed to create successful knowledge teams.

* argue that "environmental shifts and changes in organizational capabilities have created opportunities and need for virtual knowledge teams in contemporary organizations. To effectively create, utilize, and support VKT's, we must focus more attention on the VKT challenges", and then discuss the challenges of making VKTs effective.

* discuss fostering innovation and creativity as a critical challenge for knowledge work.

* discuss what is becoming a critical attribute of effective knowledge work teams: the ability to transfer knowledge effectively without causing information overload.

* discuss the role of leaders in knowledge teams, and argue that "in knowledge work teams, team leadership is critical. Although this formal leadership is often shared or rotated, we believe it must be done properly for the team to be effective".

* discuss a number of practical tips to prevent illness in teams, including providing team training, integrating new team members, setting goals and measuring results, understanding group decision-making processes, managing team conflict, building team communication skills, giving and receiving feedback, defining team members' roles and responsibilities, developing operating guidelines, and creating a team charter.

* explore how technology aids knowledge work, and argue that "technologies must be appropriately integrated into the organization if they are to benefit knowledge teams. Three particular problems to avoid are technology misuse, expecting more from technology than it can reasonably deliver, and serving technology instead of having technology serve the team".

* discuss future trends in knowledge work by illustrating six key work trends for the new millennium: (1). automation of physical work, (2). elimination of traditional jobs and work structures, (3). empowered knowledge workers, (4). knowledge work teams predominant, (5). workplace flexibility, (6). more virtual knowledge teams.

Strongly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Future trends in knowledge work.
Review: "This is the age of knowledge work. It is the age of the smart worker. The operations that learn the secret of tapping into this knowledge will always outperform those that do not. Those that master the 'collective intelligence' of knowledge work teams will be the architects of the future...As individuals, knowledge workers are smart people. But their individual effectiveness is amplified when they are also part of a smart organization. As an effective knowledge team, they can often create a sort of synergy where the outcome of the whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts. These smart teams appear as though all team members are of a common mind that shares information and ideas seamlessly across the membership-a distributed mind...This book is about knowledge work teams. Knowledge work requires a special set of skills related to an area of expertise, such as those of an engineer, a salesperson, a consultant, a manager, or a health-care professional. But it requires much more than technical competence to be successful as a knowledge worker" (from the Introduction).

In this context, Kimball Fisher and Mareen Duncan Fisher:

* define knowledge work by comparing five characteristics that differ for physical and knowledge work as follows:

- Job Characteristics: (1). Core task, (2). Critical skills, (3). Work process, (4). Work outcome, (5). Knowledge used.

- Job Characteristics of Physical Work: (1). Doing, (2). Physical, (3). Usually linear, (4). Product, (5). Applied.

- Job Characteristics of Knowledge Work: (1). Thinking, (2). Mental, (3). Usually nonlinear, (4). Information, (5). Created.

* argue that "the nature of work is changing from mostly linear to mostly nonlinear and from requiring mainly physical skills to requiring mainly mental acuity. Jobs now usually produce more information than product and require more improvisation than rote, automatic application of process. While this trend is dramatic in a few cases, for most of us the change has been a slow, steady evolution of our jobs", and illustrate this trend.

* show how teams and team-based operations differ from groups and non-team-based operations, and illustrate how these teams differ from the traditional organizations by comparing hierarchical organizations with team-based organizations as follows:

- Hierarchical Organization: hierarchical order, local optimum, maximum specification, functional defect control, specialized skill, vertical information flow, work ethic value, and conservative improvement.

- Team-Based Organization: information order, global optimum, minimum critical specification, source defect control, multiskilled, source information flow, work life value, and continuous improvement.

* illustrate the differences between physical and knowledge work teams by comparing typical physical work teams with knowledge work teams.

- Typical Physical Work Teams: physical labor, multiple generalists, inside single organization, fairly stable membership, and repetitive responsibilities.

- Typical Knowledge Work Teams: mental labor, multiple specialists, across multiple organizations, shifting membership, and single-purpose responsibilities.

* explore the process of knowledge work design, and illustrate the characteristics of evolving organizational form-learning lattice organization.

* discuss the metaphors and practices needed to create successful knowledge teams.

* argue that "environmental shifts and changes in organizational capabilities have created opportunities and need for virtual knowledge teams in contemporary organizations. To effectively create, utilize, and support VKT's, we must focus more attention on the VKT challenges", and then discuss the challenges of making VKTs effective.

* discuss fostering innovation and creativity as a critical challenge for knowledge work.

* discuss what is becoming a critical attribute of effective knowledge work teams: the ability to transfer knowledge effectively without causing information overload.

* discuss the role of leaders in knowledge teams, and argue that "in knowledge work teams, team leadership is critical. Although this formal leadership is often shared or rotated, we believe it must be done properly for the team to be effective".

* discuss a number of practical tips to prevent illness in teams, including providing team training, integrating new team members, setting goals and measuring results, understanding group decision-making processes, managing team conflict, building team communication skills, giving and receiving feedback, defining team members' roles and responsibilities, developing operating guidelines, and creating a team charter.

* explore how technology aids knowledge work, and argue that "technologies must be appropriately integrated into the organization if they are to benefit knowledge teams. Three particular problems to avoid are technology misuse, expecting more from technology than it can reasonably deliver, and serving technology instead of having technology serve the team".

* discuss future trends in knowledge work by illustrating six key work trends for the new millennium: (1). automation of physical work, (2). elimination of traditional jobs and work structures, (3). empowered knowledge workers, (4). knowledge work teams predominant, (5). workplace flexibility, (6). more virtual knowledge teams.

Strongly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: An Organisation made of Knowledge Work Teams
Review: The T-word, team, has been badly devaluated during the last few years. People talk about teams without really understanding, what they actually are about. No wonder some people react with cynicism when their CEO returns from a training seminary with the word Team on his lips.

There is a solid case for this book that addresses teams, especially knowledge work teams from a practical no-nonsense perspective. This book makes good reading not only for knowledge work team builders but also for the people that actually make up the teams. The language and structure is exceptionally readable and the issues are easy to grasp. Someone might even say that Fishers use too many cases to justify their points. Fishers start with discussing knowledge work, then teams and finally knowledge work teams and finally building a working organisation made of knowledge work teams.

Fishers do not limit their perspective to teams and organisations but discuss also their influences to societies and individuals. Teams do not work in a vacuum but change the way people work and think and live their lives.

The one thing that I disagree with is they way Fishers create an artificial (in my opinion) distinction between physical work and knowledge work, and the consequent physical work teams and knowledge work teams. Fishers stress the point that even knowledge workers do physical work and physical workers do knowledge work, but within their definition of knowledge work!

Rating:
Summary: I'll take responsibility over intelligence any time.
Review: This is a book on Knowledge Workers, and on business management, actually. It does discuss industrial age and post-industrial age workers, but it's not so much about industry, industrial workers, and modern factory automation.

The sense I came away with is that the aim of the authors was on making work teams more effective. However, for me, the book gets back to a more fundamental issue, the possibility of effectively eliminating levels of management in any organization. This is done not just by eliminating some staff, and giving the remaining staff communications. On a superficial level, automation of information access and communications for today's knowledge workers is required. However, on a more fundamental level, this is done by the assumption of a greater degree of the responsibilities by Knowledge Workers.

The book does get to the nub of flat (empowerment) versus hierarchical (delegation) management styles, which has come about with downsizing and the advent of empowered workers. It discusses how to manage processes and people with fewer managers, by enabling them to gather and use information and make decisions. Most importantly, it prioritizes: responsibility, empowerment, the management of processes, the management of people, management styles, downsizing, and information sharing. They all go together, but some of these are ends, and others are only means to an end. Further, some of these means to an end are prerequisites and others are only facilitators.

Whether tasks are delegated one-at-a-time to individuals (hierarchical), or projects and processes are turned over to a work-team (flat), in both cases communications is required. However, the differences today, are that Knowledge Workers in empowered organizations: are on multiple teams, not having just one job to do; must communicate with all team members, not just with supervisor and immediate coworkers; are responsible for the entire job, not just for one aspect of it.

Without proper orientation by management, Knowledge Workers in empowered work teams can remain focused on technical skill development or on information sharing, as ends unto themselves, or on doing their narrow tasks. What could be missing is a focus on the success of the process or project, and on the achievement on the goals of the organization. In the absence of middle managers, whose job it was to not only manage workers, departments, and processes, but also to focus on the goals of the larger organization, empowered Knowledge Workers must assume a large share of these responsibilities.

Team members must understand firstly, that responsibilities have been thrust upon them, and secondly, how to carry out these responsibilities as a self-directed work team. Today, we're not just providing communications systems to workers. We are holding people responsible, and therefore we're providing them with communications systems.

Rating:
Summary: I'll take responsibility over intelligence any time.
Review: This is a book on Knowledge Workers, and on business management, actually. It does discuss industrial age and post-industrial age workers, but it's not so much about industry, industrial workers, and modern factory automation.

The sense I came away with is that the aim of the authors was on making work teams more effective. However, for me, the book gets back to a more fundamental issue, the possibility of effectively eliminating levels of management in any organization. This is done not just by eliminating some staff, and giving the remaining staff communications. On a superficial level, automation of information access and communications for today's knowledge workers is required. However, on a more fundamental level, this is done by the assumption of a greater degree of the responsibilities by Knowledge Workers.

The book does get to the nub of flat (empowerment) versus hierarchical (delegation) management styles, which has come about with downsizing and the advent of empowered workers. It discusses how to manage processes and people with fewer managers, by enabling them to gather and use information and make decisions. Most importantly, it prioritizes: responsibility, empowerment, the management of processes, the management of people, management styles, downsizing, and information sharing. They all go together, but some of these are ends, and others are only means to an end. Further, some of these means to an end are prerequisites and others are only facilitators.

Whether tasks are delegated one-at-a-time to individuals (hierarchical), or projects and processes are turned over to a work-team (flat), in both cases communications is required. However, the differences today, are that Knowledge Workers in empowered organizations: are on multiple teams, not having just one job to do; must communicate with all team members, not just with supervisor and immediate coworkers; are responsible for the entire job, not just for one aspect of it.

Without proper orientation by management, Knowledge Workers in empowered work teams can remain focused on technical skill development or on information sharing, as ends unto themselves, or on doing their narrow tasks. What could be missing is a focus on the success of the process or project, and on the achievement on the goals of the organization. In the absence of middle managers, whose job it was to not only manage workers, departments, and processes, but also to focus on the goals of the larger organization, empowered Knowledge Workers must assume a large share of these responsibilities.

Team members must understand firstly, that responsibilities have been thrust upon them, and secondly, how to carry out these responsibilities as a self-directed work team. Today, we're not just providing communications systems to workers. We are holding people responsible, and therefore we're providing them with communications systems.