tl;dr: Changing to a knowledge economy mindset has a few shifts. The cultural paradigm of the definition of “work” is one of the biggest.
Yesterday, I shared the idea from my brother (the zen storage person at Dell) that the ideal place to be in a Knowledge Economy is:
“at any moment, you are doing something that is important to you, that you enjoy, and that is challenging.”
That’s great from the perspective of the Knowledge Worker.
But what about the consumer of the KW’s output and, more specifically, the real thing that is being purchased, the outcome?
That outcome is measured in “value.”
But keep in mind what the Austrian marketers would remind us,
“Only those who ultimately consume can create value.“
Austrian Economics In Contemporary Business Applications, Mises.org
So, in our equation, we have the Knowledge Worker who is (hopefully) in the ideal position, feeling challenged, etc.
But, there’s one part of that equation from yesterday that we left out. Namely, the consumer of the “work” from the knowledge worker.
Knowledge, Time, and Value
Here’s the challenge I see popping up.
The idea of “knowledge workers” is out there. Most white collar jobs, I would venture to say, would fall in that category.
But the “value of the knowledge worker’s output” is far more difficult to measure.
So what happens?
People default to what they know.
Measuring time.
Those two are incompatible.
The Consultant and the Job Interview
A friend of mind recently left his job and has two opportunities in front of him.
One is a project as a consultant. The other is as an executive of a mid-size company.
He didn’t want to accept the consulting project for fear that he might get the executive position.
Of course, there were no guarantees about the job offer.
He was concerned.
I asked him,
“any reason you can’t do both?”
His response was, “the company is hiring me full-time.”
To which I said:
“Are they hiring you for your time or for the results you deliver?
At the end of the quarter, will the CEO care how many hours you worked? Of that you hit your numbers? Who cares if you do it in 1 day or 5?”
His response:
“His expectation is that I’ll be there full-time. That’s what companies expect.”
That may be what companies and the people who make them up “expect,” but that doesn’t mean it’s right.
In fact, it’s very wrong.
That mentality of “you’ll be here full-time” is a legacy of the Time Economy, where value was created between 9-5. After all, that’s the only time when the production line was open. If people weren’t on the line at the precise time when they were needed to be, the value (as defined by the customer) would not get created.
That’s not the case today for knowledge worker jobs.
Not even closely.
Having Multiple Jobs
Today, we look at people like Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey and wonder ‘how can they be CEO of more than one company?”
The answer is that they can do it because they are ultimate knowledge workers.
I suspect that, in the future, we’ll see more and more people, working from home, who have multiple jobs with different companies. Perhaps even multiple C-level jobs like Elon and Jack.
There are all types of societal implications to this that I won’t even begin to explore here.
However, the tools are here now for this new Knowledge Economy paradigm to exist.
That doesn’t mean everyone’s ready for it.
Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that it’s here.
