Friday, October 07, 2005

MANAGEMENT'S NEW PARADIGMS - Knowledge Worker

I thought that, I would share with you an Article that I read on Management Paradigms.
Its from Peter F Drucker who is considered to be a Management Guru.
Its on the productivity on knowledge workers. Though simple, powerful thoughts.

The productivity of the knowledge worker is still abysmally low. It
has probably not improved in the past 100 or even 200 years - for the
simple reason that nobody has worked at improving the productivity.
All our work on productivity has been on the productivity of the manual worker.
This will require, above all, very much changed assumptions about
what constitutes management. One does not "manage" people, as
previously assumed. One leads them. The way one maximises their
performance is by capitalising on their strengths and their knowledge
rather than trying to force them into moulds. Knowledge workers cannot
be managed as subordinates; they are associates. This difference is more than cosmetic.
The very definition of a knowledge worker is one who knows more about
his or her job than anybody else in the organisation.
For example, the engineer servicing a customer does not know more
about the product than the engineering manager does. But she knows
more about the customer, and that may be more important than product
knowledge. The meteorologist on an air base is vastly inferior in rank
to the air base commander. But he is of no use unless he knows
infinitely more about weather forecasting than the air base commander
does. The mechanic servicing an airliner knows more about the
technical condition of the plane than the airport manager to whom he reports, and so on.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Magesh,
well, that was really a good article, n it really made sense to me.. Hoping you to have more n more stomach filled meals and wishing you the best in your years ahead, n hope to see you reaching your dreams buddy...
With loads of wishes,
Sridhar..

Magesh Kumar said...

Thanks, Sridhar....
But each stomach filled meal costs me 15$ :(