Effective
Engineering
e-Newsletter
3/8/2007
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eN-070308:
Knowledge Is Power!
By Tom Dennis President, Effective Engineering
[tdennis@effectiveeng.com]
Take this job and shove it! is a well known
refrain from a familiar country & western song. But its also a refrain
that is far more applicable in todays Information Age than was
ever the case in the past. As engineers, or really as anyone who is a knowledge
worker (as will be defined below), it is a fact that todays companies
really need you far more than you need them. While you certainly shouldnt
abuse it, it is important that you recognize the power that your knowledge
brings you in your companies.
In the Pre-Industrial Age, most production tasks were carried out
by many people using simple implements, and much of the work was able to be
performed by pretty much anyone. People were interchangeable, and if more
products were required, more people were added to the production process.
The term man-month was conceived, and implied that people were
interchangeable with months. That is, if a job took 4 man-months, it could
be performed equally well by 1 person working for 4 months, by 2 people
working for 2 months, or by 4 people working for 1 month. The critical
element of companies production efforts in those times were people, not
equipment. This is still true today in certain areas, as demonstrated by
the work performed by migrant workers.
In the Industrial Age, people declined from being the most critical
element of companies production efforts and equipment took over that
position. Companies invested in capital-intensive expensive equipment to
eliminate highly repetitive manual jobs and were able to eliminate high
labor costs and increase the quality of their products. Anywhere that the
labor intensive steps required to carry out a task could be thoroughly
quantified and replicated by automated equipment, this was increasingly done
and made good economic sense. This is still being done today in
manufacturing, agricultural, and other markets. This has led to the rise of
manufacturing automation, production robots, automated agricultural
equipment, etc. Watching TV shows such as The History Channels Modern
Marvels, or Discovery Channels How Its Made shows the
tremendous advances made in automation of tasks ranging from donut and candy
making to automobile building to integrated circuit fabrication, and way
beyond. Were now seeing many lights out factories where the only
people present are the maintenance workers needed to keep the machines
running.
While automated equipment can replace the production activities of human
labor associated with repetitive tasks, the tasks of designing and
developing the original products or even the automated equipment to build
those products cannot be automated to the same extent. It takes people with
specialized intelligence and skills to conceive, plan, and implement those
designs and to turn concepts into reality. Such people can be classified as
knowledge workers, and for them, the concept of man-month
simply does not apply, because such workers are not interchangeable.
Engineers are preeminent examples of knowledge workers, as are many
others whose specialized knowledge enables them to carry out activities that
cannot be readily performed by others without those specialized skills, and
cannot be readily automated. It is such knowledge and information
that differentiates them. We are now deeply into the Information Age.
In the Industrial Age model, the means of production (equipment)
remains at the company facility when the people go home at night (often
continuing to run and produce). In the Information Age model, the
means of production (knowledge workers) walks out the door every
night when the people go home, because the means of production is the brains
of those knowledge workers. If a key knowledge worker
leaves a company it can have a potentially devastating impact on that
companys ability to succeed or possibly even to exist.
Companies need to recognize the critical value that their knowledge
workers provide to the ongoing success of the company. Managing knowledge
workers can be a challenge. They tend to be highly skilled, highly
capable, and highly opinionated. Trying to manage them is often a
bit like herding cats (See
eN-031106 Herding Cats: The Art of Managing Engineers). Companies
should not apply the same models and methods in managing their knowledge
workers as they do for their production workers.
Production workers are generally managed based on how much
production they can accomplish in a given time period, for example how many
widgets they can produce in a shift. The level of creativity that a production
worker exhibits may be very useful, but is generally not highly
weighted in evaluating their performance.
For knowledge workers, however, their level of creativity and their
ability to apply their knowledge and intelligence to the job at hand is the
primary value they bring to the job, and in managing them, this needs to be
recognized. This is not a simple task. Setting performance measures for knowledge
workers based on how much they accomplish in a given time period can be
misleading, because what constitutes performance can be difficult
to determine. Original design efforts may be based on existing designs and
may therefore be straightforward. However, they may instead require new and
unproven inventions that take time, trial and error, and even some degree of
luck; they may require significantly more time than initially estimated.
Setting hard and fast performance criteria may not even be possible, and can
often be counter-productive. In many instances the manager who has the
responsibility to determine the performance of the people reporting
into him/her may not have the ability to even recognize what is involved in
the work his/her people are doing. Yet this manager is often given sole
responsibility to judge the performance of his/her people. If a
poor or incorrect performance feedback is given, it can lead to dissatisfied
employees, poor morale, reduced efforts, or even the loss of critical
resources.
Good knowledge workers do or should recognize the value that they
bring to the organization, and can recognize whether or not their value is
appreciated by their management. Based on this, they will be happy or
unhappy campers. When happy, it is a win-win arrangement. When unhappy,
there is trouble ahead for everyone involved.
With production workers, it was often the worker who would say to
the employer, Take this job and shove it!, and the employer could
quickly bring in someone new to take his/her place. With knowledge
workers, it is more often the employer who says to the employee, Please
take this job and love it!, for the employer needs this type of
employee more than the employee needs the employer.
Employees can recognize the unique values they provide to their company, and
the values that their teams, working effectively together, can bring to the
company. Assuming that the company has good and strong leadership, these knowledge
workers will, by and large, determine the success or failure of the
company. It can be an incredible experience when everything clicks and the
synergistic efforts of everyone working together effectively can produce
results that far exceed the sum of the efforts of each individual.
Remember, when used effectively, knowledge is
power!
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Effective Engineering Consulting
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