IT Leaders at the Vanguard of 21st Century Productivity: Overcoming Knowledge Worker Attention Deficit Disorder Alison Freer, Director - Lead & Transform 3rd November 2011 - BCS Elite Leeds
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IT Leaders at the Vanguard of 21st
Century Productivity:
Overcoming Knowledge Worker Attention Deficit Disorder
Alison Freer, Director - Lead & Transform3rd November 2011 - BCS Elite Leeds
Today
• Assessing the benefits of improving knowledge worker productivity
• Sharing top tips for making theory work in practice
• How IT can lead the productivity revolution.
• E-mail, MS Office used for 30+hours per week
• 20 - 200+++ emails received a day
• 150 hours per year, per person looking for lost information
• 80% corporate information is unstructured - terabytes of it!
Attention Deficit
Gartner 2005
Productivity Gap• 10:1 difference in
productivity amongst software organisations
• The best people outperform the worst by 10:1
• The best performer is about 2.5 times better than the median
Tom DeMarco 1999
Drucker’s Prophecy
“the unique contribution of management in the 20th century was the 50 fold improvement in the productivity of manual workers…....
“....the most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st Century is to similarly increase the productivity of knowledge workers”.
Peter Drucker 1999
‘Thinking for a Living’
Thomas Davenport, HBR 2005
Knowledge Workers..
• Like autonomy
• Value their knowledge but don’t always share easily
• Find it hard to explain the detail of what they do
• Add maximum value when they collaborate.
Productive People...• Limit the number of gadgets
• Invest effort in deciding priority information & organising it well
• Get help & use assistants, to some degree
• Use lists
• Adapt tools & approaches to suit different situations
‘I-shaped’ People
IDeep subject knowledge, applied to problem-solving in specific domains.
Needs... time & space to think, perfect, test and research.
‘T-shaped’ People
TBroad subject interests, plus core expertise, drawn to maximising opportunities in complex business environments.
Needs... interaction, to share & learn from others.
Table Talk
• What does knowledge worker productivity mean in your organisation?
• How do you measure it?
Maximising Knowledge Worker Productivity
• Treat knowledge workers as assets not costs
• Physical & virtual workplaces to ‘bump’ together
• Expose to learning & teaching
• Automate their routine tasks
The Hybrid Organisation
TECHNOLOGY PEOPLE
WORKPLACE
THE HYBRID ORGANISATION
Economic Uncertainty
Social & Business Tech
Innovations
Demographic Change
Mass Globalisation
Microsoft 2011
Top Tip #1- Listen• Software Studio Team -
variable productivity. Over & under utilisation of different individuals
• 1:1 mentoring followed by facilitated team project events.
• Identified productivity enablers & blockers for different personalities.
Top Tip #2- Engage• Public sector IT department,
facing out-sourcing test
• Leadership team mentoring followed by whole department customer focus workshops - involving real customers!
• Engaged ‘I-shaped’ personalities directly with customer facing projects.
• Department retained.
Top Tip #3- Adopt & Adapt• Process Manufacturing IT Service -
high autonomy, high budgetary discretion
• Experimented with social network-like platform (Yammer) within IT.
• Engaged specific manufacturing colleagues in ‘Ideation’ for new processes.
• Platform and Ideation process now adopted by EMEA business.
Top Tip #4- Drive• University IT Team - federated
structure, poor project & programme delivery on IT & Capital.
• Senior IT Team initiated a business Benefits-led approach for all new projects.
• Structured change programme - IT & business colleagues together.
• Immediately improved delivery of high investment projects. Raising sector standards.
LEAD
How will you take a LEAD on knowledge worker productivity?
Table Talk
References• Microsoft:
www.thehybridorganisation.com
• Thinking for a Living http://www.tomdavenport.com
• Knowledge Worker Productivity, Peter Drucker 1999, California Management Review
• Durham University Innovation Studio http://www.dur.ac.uk/dbs/faculty/projects/innovationstudio/
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