I want to kick around the whole knowledge worker situation a bit. Actually, I want to pull this thread a long way out, but not all in one entry. Consider this my springboard into some deep and turbulent water. What I REALLY want is to hear from you all on this subject — I don't have the answers and I am genuinely interested in your take on this.
I've been expanding my horizons lately on this topic with commentary from experts who study knowledge workers. In particular, I'm a big fan of David Allen, author of the popular Getting Things Done, who provides some great insights into the inner workings of knowledge workers as individuals. I've also been reading Thomas Davenport and his work, Thinking for a Living.
Both of these books are useful to help crystallize some of our inherent instincts and suspicions about how we (and the people around us we are tasked to support) think and work, but neither come close to making me feel complete when it comes to how to get us all to work together in a purposeful and efficient manner. In fact, they probably generate more questions than answers.
For example, GTD concepts are great if you are an independent like David, operating autonomously of some larger entity. It reminds me of my black saber-tooth cat, Kingsford. He is very much his own feline, with little regard for my whims, even though he begrudgingly understands that I am the alpha male of the house. Mr. Allen offers no banana for the corporate monkey when it comes to herding cats (instead of being a cat). Imagine the entire corporate staff individually and independently developing ways to track all their stuff and unilaterally deciding whether to do it, delegate it, defer it or trash it. Likewise, although Davenport has a section about managing knowledge workers, he never really gets down to brass tacks for how to get everyone to play nicely together, aligned to accomplishing strategic intent.
Many PMOs out there are intended to support professional knowledge worker environments, which right off the bat is a bit of a set up. Whether we are talking technologists, engineers or designers, they want the assistance of a PMO about as much as they want a rash. Let me elaborate. Drawing upon the works mentioned and your basic daily observation, we know that knowledge workers, in particular, professionals, tend to be a highly independent sort and very cat-like. When you get right down to it, we like to do what we want and do it the way we want to, not necessarily how someone else wants us to. In fact, we are generally loath to take direction. Nor are we inclined to clue anyone else in on what it is that we are doing or our methods or progress, if we can avoid it. We want to establish our own list of tasks, set our own priorities for them, and figure out how to pull it all off without any help or oversight.
Adding fuel to this is a great deal of radical yet fashionable hype about how as twenty-first century independent innovators, all interconnected by the web, we will somehow do the right thing without any guidance or direction. No need for countless managerial layers of bureaucracy to stymie our creative juices; just give us all a high-speed internet connection and turn us loose. Why, in a few short years, the corporate worker will be as extinct as the sharecropper. We'll all be independent contractors, vying for work as one big global pool of hired guns. The world ain't that flat yet folks, or else I would be able to see my own rear end in way out there in front of me.
Left to our own devices, we all might work very hard and be quite inventive as individuals, but that doesn't necessarily translate into earnings or efficiently executing a defined strategy. Sitting around at some laboratory at 3M accidentally developing Post-It goo is great work if you can get it, but pure R&D positions are definitely not the norm. The vast majority of knowledge workers are hired in a corporate or public domain to be purposefully engaged within the confines of a very targeted set of responsibilities and functions. Let's get the smartest, most talented people we can, and then box them into very limited, sometimes mundane roles.
So we have this dichotomy at play between the very nature of knowledge workers and corporate necessity. Enter the PMO, tasked with defining common approaches, tools and processes and somehow getting everyone to adopt them — sometimes it is about like being asked to teach cats to line dance. It's not that the cats aren't smart or graceful, they just aren't inclined to two-step to that particular tune, no matter how hard we fiddle.
So — where is that elusive balance point between fostering integration and collaboration across hundreds or thousands of knowledge workers without over-functioning? How can we be flexible enough to tap into the vast intellectual potential of our staff to make breakthrough advances, while still directing limited resources to aggressively get the needed work done? How much process is enough? Is that template really appropriate and helpful, or does it force us into an unnecessary or counterproductive standard? Where is the fine line between setting policy and leaving it up to the discretion of the individual? How much autonomy and independence can we afford, yet still get the information we need to understand what is collectively going on? What is the right amount of oversight to insure our resource investment without being overbearing or distrustful? Is that workflow a superhighway, or is it barbed wire strung across the intellectual free range?
These are big issues for the PMO, because the answers you give ultimately determine whether you make a difference or are treated with indifference. I think learning how to dance with elegance and style on this particular razor blade constitutes one of the key missing puzzle pieces when it comes to learning how to effectively manage a world full of knowledge workers. It's a not a lost art — it's a relatively new and vexing enigma that has emerged as an unintended consequence of the new global order. I doubt there is a single right answer, but could there be a common approach to getting an answer?
Ever hear the expression "Let the Big Dogs Eat"? If you haven't heard it before, visualize a bowl of yummy dog treats and several very hungry, very differently sized, and arguably unguided dogs prowling behind a gate. Now open the gate — who's eating and who's not?
