Are modern knowledge workers burst or busy?

Stephen Collins recently made a few comments on Anne Zelenka’s blog post - Busyness vs. Burst: Why Corporate Web Workers Look Unproductive.

I read Anne’s article and just felt like she was complaining about an annoying boss who thought that her web surfing was for pleasure rather than work.

… your coworkers who don’t get how the Web changes work may think you’re a malingerer, given your incessant online connecting and surfing combined with your lack of attention to the old rules of work.

Stephen agreed with her, suggesting he “always works this way”. I often work in burst mode, but as a consultant, the reality is that my clients expect to see certain outputs and products and often treat me like I am a factory worker in a cannery, rather than offering strategic advice that requires lots of covert thought that bear fruit as burst of output at the end. I might process knowledge and be an advisor (what Drucker calls knowledge work, and what Anne calls ‘bursty’ work) but the reality is that I work in a busy world and I am expected to look busy.

Ultimately, Anne’s ideas on being ‘bursty’ rather than ‘busy’ is an important one because they highlight a growing problem for all knowledge workers (whether the web is their tool of choice or not) in the knowledge economy - changing habits in the way people want to work.

Peter Drucker introduced the term Knowledge Economy:

“…the rules and practices that determined success in the industrial economy of the 20th century need rewriting in an interconnected world where resources such as know-how are more critical than other economic resources. These rules need to be rewritten at the levels of firms and industries in terms of knowledge management and at the level of public policy as knowledge policy or knowledge-related policy.”

Drucker’s theories essentially say that those who need knowledge and information to do their work should be supported in appropriate ways. Taking Anne’s comments, I would suggest that if you’re a knowledge worker you need an environment that supports you way of processing, assimilating, documenting, storing and communicating knowledge and information. While this can be hard if you don’t have the tools you want - like del.icio.us for example - due to company rules or regulations, or the right sort of managerial environment (e.g. like people who want to micromanage you) you still have a duty to tell The Powers That Be.

If you’re a manager or leader with knowledge workers, Drucker has a lot to say on how the world is changing and how you lead your people needs to change. The mass of social psychology literature suggests that you need to adopt a contingency-based approach to ensure you gets the best out of your people. You need to support knowledge workers in ways that will ensure you get the output you’re looking for. Think of it like the turtle and the hare: some workers will produce a constant level of output, and some will produce in large bursts (like Stephen). Me? I tend to do a mixture of both. If you’re a manager, just be aware that you need to know how we work and support it to get the results you want, in the time that you need it, by providing the appropriate tools and processes:

“…companies stand to benefit a great deal if they can build … platforms for collaboration, information sharing, and knowledge creation.” - Andrew McAfee (2007) [1]

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[1]. McAfee, A. 2007. The Impact of Information Technology (IT) on Businesses and their Leaders
Andrew McAfee. April 12. Online at: http://blog.hbs.edu…busyness/, accessed on 22 April 2007.