Immediately after pressing 'save' on my previous post, I came across two interesting posts by Ron Baker on the VeraSage site. His first post, entitled, "Human Capital, Not Cattle", discusses the ways that professional firms forget that they need 'knowledge workers' more than those 'knowledge workers' need them, that firms should act as 'lightning rods' for talent, and that the true fate of any firm rests on qualities like passion, desire, innovation and creativity - qualities that are not generally part of a firm's 'metrics.'
The follow up post, "But Wait, Professionals Aren't Knowledge Workers" explores the opinion that most firms are really filled with 'factory workers' rather than knowledge workers - that it is really the management (leadership) of the firm that determines whether a firm is filled with knowledge workers. He says,
When you consider the metrics used by most firms to measure their team members, they all come from the Industrial Revolution’s command-and-control hierarchies (realization, utilization, billable hours, etc). Yet as I discussed in my posts on The Firm of the Past and The Firm of the Future, the metrics we use to measure a knowledge worker’s effectiveness are woefully inadequate.
Both posts are must-reads. Together, they reveal the current state of most firms: focus on inputs, costs, and effort, filled with factory workers, and the factors that will make a difference for firms of the future: emphasis on value, individuals, innovation, creativity, and autonomy for knowledge workers who are passionate and self-motivated.
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