“Thinking for a Living”
Just finished reading Thinking for a Living. It’s about how knowledge workers are fundamentally different from, hmm, other workers. What keeps them going, how they should and should not be managed, why that’s important, etc. If you’re a knowledge worker and are unsatisfied with little things here and there, this will give you a solid foundation for improving things. If you’re a knowledge worker who happens to manage other knowledge workers, this is a must.
Towards the end the author argues that managing knowledge workers needs to evolve from old-style management to management of this special class of workers. It goes a little like this:
- From overseeing work to doing it too
- From organizing hierarchies to organizing communities
- From hiring and firing, to recruiting and retaining
- From building manual skills, to building knowledge skills
- From evaluating visible job performance to assessing invisible knowledge achievements
- From ignoring culture to building a knowledge-friendly culture
- From supporting the bureaucracy to fending it off
- From relying on internal personnel to considering a variety of sources
The scientific way I use to know if I liked a book, is by the amount of text I underlined. The more I do it, the more it means I’m enjoying what I’m reading. I’ve used half a pencil on this one, very good sign.
