Continuing from previous posts, I'm attempting to take a broader look at the implications of our rapid shift to an information economy.
We've looked at information governance, and information risk management.
But what about value generation from information? Or, more importantly, the people who generate this value?
And that brings the focus to where most of the new value is being created in the enterprise -- the knowledge worker.
We're All Knowledge Workers, Aren't We?
Or, at least we'd like to think of ourselves that way ...
My definition is simple -- if you earn your living primarily from what you know, rather than the tasks you routinely perform, you probably can be safely described as a knowledge worker.
I'd offer that any task -- routinely performed -- is a candidate for either automation or outsourcing. And as we look at modern organizations, we're well along down this particular path.
What's left? An organization of knowledge workers -- people who think, communicate and collaborate for a living. And, if you consider my definition above, you'll probably realize that you've got far more knowledge workers than you might have initially thought.
An Underserved Audience?
Think, for a moment, how much your organization spends on IT.
Now, think how much of that goes to directly support the needs of knowledge workers: things like convenient information access, analysis tools, communication platforms, collaboration tools, and so on.
Hint: when I ask these questions in front of a business audience (not IT people) the answer is usually snickering and sarcastic comments. Even if you think you're doing a good job with your knowledge workers, your internal customers might feel differently.
If you're like many organization, you'll probably notice a preponderance of IT's investment is being spent on the transactional side of the business. Nothing wrong with that, but -- ask yourself -- where will the new value come from?
Sure, we've all got email. And we can ask for reports -- maybe we don't get them, but we can ask! And we all have nice PCs and cell phones to help us with our jobs. Maybe even a document-oriented collaboration environment, like eRoom or Sharepoint.
But where's the self-service information portals? Enterprise search? Mobile access to all applications? Conversational collaboration tools? RSS for the enterprise? Mashable data?
I bet you don't have many of these things. You're not alone -- the vast majority of IT organizations I work with have a distinct imbalance between where IT is focusing and where unique value is being generated.
My argument is simple: the growing importance of knowledge workers has, in many cases, left the IT investment model in the dust. And this is going to have to change, one way or another.
Do You Know Your Shadow IT?
The best way of understanding the unmet needs of knowledge workers is to go looking for "shadow IT" -- clever people who've figured out a way to get things done, often without the knowledge of IT.
Over the years, I've found amazing innovation from people who are using the tools at hand (albeit inefficiently and potentially insecurely) to get the job done.
I've met people who've extracted information from every corporate database, and built their personal data mart. People who've loaded up everything they can find into a ginormous file system, and use Google Desktop to find things. Ad-hoc wiki, blogging and intranet sites simply so people can find and communicate more easily. Someone who's figured out how to hack their iPhone to get at internal applications.
And so on.
Traditional IT tends to react rather negatively when confronting these "shadow" IT capabilities. Their natural instinct is to shut it down. I find this behavior extremely counterproductive.
Look, I'm in marketing. When a customer tells me "you know what I need?", I tend to listen carefully, because if my company can deliver what they're looking for, that's a good thing.
When a knowledge worker tells IT "you know what I need?" the answer is usually a polite flavor of "no", or potentially, a tortuous process to dissuade them from ever considering asking again.
Knowledge Workers Are Your New Customers
Traditional IT thinks in terms of big projects, each with their project plans and justifications. And, for classical IT, this process and task orientation makes a lot of sense.
But this model is poorly suited at delivering what knowledge workers need.
Take data warehousing and business intelligence. Anyone who's tried to pin down firm requirements, and build exactly what people asked for has probably been frustrated with the results.
Why? Knowledge workers don't know what they really want until they see something that's pretty close. They use it for a while, and then they say "gee, wouldn't it be great if ...". Knowledge workers tend to evolve their requirements rapidly once they're presented an initial capability.
This behavior flies in the face of traditional, finite, project-oriented IT, doesn't it?
My Example Of Social Media
Last year, I took on the project of making EMC more proficient at social media behaviors: blogging, wikis, forums -- something I call "the big conversation".
We went through a classical requirements definition process. The list got longer and longer, and -- with each new "requirement" -- we had less of a basis for what we were asking for, and less likelihood that we would ever find anything that we would do the job.
So I decided to cut back the list to the essential core, put it out in front of users, and see what happened. This was not a popular move at the time.
Guess what? We didn't need all the stuff we thought we needed. Users came up with requirements once they'd used the platform we'd put up. And we're spending our resources on what people really need, rather than what we thought they might need.
Many aspects of this particular platform are horrifying to some traditional IT folks. There's no real capacity planning, as an example. We self-manage things like confidentiality and conduct. The platform isn't really integrated with the other platforms we have at EMC, and -- in some cases -- overlap with existing investments.
But, the fact remains, a very modest investment in IT has produced an enormous business benefit, and continues to this day. If you're interested, you can read about it on my other blog.
Mobile Knowledge Workers
As another example, a large portion of EMC's workforce is very mobile -- they're either meeting with customers, or travelling to meet with a customer. Yes, everyone has email on their mobile, but we can't get to many of our internal, behind the firewall applications. And, even if we could, the presentation is designed for a PC, and not an itty-bitty screen.
I don't know about you, but I hate dragging out my laptop, finding a power source, waiting 5 minutes for the darn thing to boot up, and then another 15 minutes wrestling with connectivity. So, when I'm travelling, the laptop doesn't come out of the bag too often, does it?
Let's see. Roughly 10,000 mobile knowledge workers. Make them all 10% more productive, maybe 20%, what's it worth?
But not too many people are thinking that way, because they're not accustomed to thinking about knowledge workers, or -- worse -- they bring preconceived notions.
It's A Different Investment Model For IT
IT people like defined requirements, finite projects, inescapable ROI and defined budgets. The problem is that, for most knowledge worker challenges, none of these things exist.
More importantly, there's a "business enablement" investment that's required for each of these.
No sense putting up an information mart unless you're going to hire a few analysts to go around and show everyone how to use it. No sense building a platform for conversational collaboration unless you're going to have a few business-facing individuals to help get people comfortable with the environment.
Ditto for enterprise search, mobile enablement, mashable data, and so on.
There's a parallel resource investment, usually thought of as "outside IT", for each of these knowledge worker support platforms that often isn't made, so whatever capability is brought to bear often goes underused and unexploited.
And the organization loses enthusiasm for the whole idea.
We Don't Have The Funding, People, Mandate, Etc.
When I press the occasional IT organization on the subject, I can usually get some sort of response along these lines.
My response usually doesn't make many friends. Taken in aggregate, IT has considerable resources, they just have to decide what's important, and what's not.
Same thing I get told when I ask for more funding ;-)
And It's Not Just Business
I recently read with extreme pleasure how the troops in Iraq are using mashable data (e.g. Google Maps), to create a collective picture of the streets of Baghdad. Every time a team goes on patrol, they take pictures, write reports, etc. of what they saw, and then post it on a map of the city.
Now, if it's your turn to go on patrol in a new neighborhood, you can appreciate the value of this. If you think about this for a moment, you'll realize that this sort of approach flies in the face of miltary doctrine (and traditional IT spend!) on so many levels.
But, essentially, it recognizes that the soldiers on the ground are knowledge workers. And the ROI of this sort of investment has to compare favorably with alternative approaches.
The Logic Is Inescapable
Or, at least I think so.
Are knowledge workers a growing part of your organization's unique value?
What's the investment model that IT uses for supporting knowledge workers?
How are projects thought of, scoped, managed, resourced? Are you using traditional templates, or newer ones more suited to the job at hand?
Are parallel investments being made for business enablement? Or is the thinking that IT's job is just to deliver what's asked for?
The answers to these questions will say a lot about how IT will deliver value in the future, won't it?
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