If you are like most L+D professionals, you know you can make a much bigger contribution than you get asked to make. You know you can do so much more for your employer than design and deliver powerful training programs.
If you can relate to the “you’re not a prophet in your own land” frustration, there might be an opportunity for you to break free of that.
Here’s an idea that could be the key:
“The biggest opportunity to increase employee productivity—both the quality and quantity of their output—and contribute to your company’s competitive advantage in today’s knowledge economy is through knowing how to improve the way knowledge work is designed and performed in your company.” Dr. James (Jim) Pepitone
In an upcoming webinar, Increasing Knowledge Worker Productivity: A New Opportunity for L&D Professionals , Dr. Pepitone and I will share why this is so, and what you can do about this huge opportunity to make a difference.
In the meantime, here are some thoughts to consider that shed light on why this is a huge opportunity.
The greatest opportunity in business today for generating more economic value—whether through increasing productivity or capitalizing on profitable opportunities—lies not in squeezing more efficiency out of standardized, manual work. The biggest opportunity for creating more economic-value likes in knowing how to generate more economic value out of Knowledge Work. (In the webinar, we’ll explain why).
LEAN and other approaches that have led to increased efficiencies in standardized, manual work. Because of the tremendous success of these approaches, the rate of cost-savings realized by improving efficiencies in manual work has declined over the years. In other words, because of the success of this approach, it is now subject to the law of diminishing returns. On the other hand, the productivity of Knowledge Work has actually fallen
Standardization, best practices, and tight quality control lead to efficiencies, minimum waste, and cost-savings. These practices, when applied to Knowledge Work, lead to employee disengagement, reduced productivity, and a lack of innovation.
Most employers realize only a fraction of the true economic value-generating capability of their employees. There are three overriding reasons for this.
- Most of today’s jobs consist of increasingly greater percentages of knowledge work.
- Getting the best results out of knowledge work and knowledge workers requires very different job design and management practices than what works with manual work.
- Most employers use job designs and management practices that were created in the early 1900’s for optimizing repetitive, manual labor. Again, these approaches are not effective with knowledge work.
Employers need to know how to identify high value knowledge work activities across the organization and within each job so they can capitalize on the opportunity presented by the untapped potential of knowledge work. They also need to know how to make it possible for employees to generate the most value from those opportunities.
A final thought to consider
Your employer has already paid for the performance potential inherent in the knowledge workers they hired. Training and Development professionals can easily learn how to help management realize far greater economic value from this potential. Doesn’t it make sense for you to know how to help management turn knowledge worker talent and potential into greater economic value?
As you reflect on these points, think about the difference it would make in your organization if managers at all levels knew how to get more productivity from employees, not by squeezing more work out of already overworked people, but by creating the conditions that enable employees to use their talents and abilities fully, and by doing so, provide the greatest value to your organization. When that happens everybody wins.
- Your employer generates greater revenue.
- Your managers get to work with happier, easier to manage employees.
- Your employees get to make a difference, work in an environment that supports them being their best, and go to work feeling supported and championed.
What’s not to love about that?
Join us February 19 2:00 p.m. ET for the webinar, Increasing Knowledge Worker Productivity: A New Opportunity for L&D Professionals. We will present how you can make this happen in your organization. In the meantime, if you have questions or comments, we would love to hear from you.
