Barrier:
Neglect of the accumulated Management Wisdom

The Assembly Line demonstrates an effective method to implement wisdom. Using it Taylor converged advances in technology with skills and used incentives to realize the possible on a sustained basis. Personnel do not have to remember steps or procedures.  I have developed the Knowledge Assembly Line in a similar vein to serve Management Wisdom:

• Civil servants and corporate professionals are end-products of the evolution of teamwork; their interactions are therefore governed by norms. I have identified the finite repeatable Actions with which they interact and the norms for deciding the Actions that follow a given Action.  This enables a single rule for administrators to select their next Action on an event. Repeated application of the rule on an event during its circulation creates a single process to coordinate administrators for conducting all their Knowledge interactions. In effect it sets up a Knowledge Assembly Line. The administrators are coordinated even if distributed in space and time. The Knowledge they exchange flows through the pipeline established by the coordination in a manner quite similar to Discussion boards popular on news stories.

The Hack: ‘Creating a common language to unite stakeholders’  explains how the Line is introduced into common usage through the medium of language, a daily necessity. Adoption of the language is achieved  without incentives by building in satisfaction of key needs of the Knowledge workers into the Assembly Line.  

The identification of the key needs and their satisfaction by the Line (referred to as both System and Infrastructure here) is founded on an understanding of human behavior, appreciation of the professional needs of Knowledge workers and harnessing of technology:

• Knowledge workers often have to sacrifice personal time leading to decline in quality of their family lives. They will embrace means to increase their family time. The system’s ability to update data securely over the internet and sustain productivity offline transparently, with full access to the accumulated thinking on an issue till the time of going offline, converts fallow time to contemplation and work time, and raises family time.
  • The way of working implements proven means to satisfy the drive to learn. The learning covers not only prompt availability of executive information but also revelation of misdirected thinking and effort through feedback and surfacing of patterns of behavior. Learning for results has a strong appeal per anthropologist Edward Hall as reported (13) by Senge: “The drive to learn is as strong as the sexual drive - it begins earlier and lasts longer”.
  • Professionals suffer anxieties arising from conduct of interactions in addition to those springing from uncertainties in the work environment. Philosophy and maturity provide a response to uncertainties, and may even seek to take advantage of them, but today personnel are helpless against the stress of untamed interactions, i.e., interactions that add to the backlog of work or present themselves without context or birth anxieties or simply demand priority. The infrastructure tames these anxieties by responding to the need:
    • Each Event: Who is accountable for action to progress the event?
    • Each Event: Is there protection from procedural oversights?
    • Each Event: How can I make a meaningful contribution?
    • Each event: Is a consensus evolving? Is the responsibility shared?
    • Events: How to identify and resolve processing delays?
    • Events: What is the progress on my requests for action, i.e., my expectations from members of my support group?
    • Events: Have follow-ups been initiated where needed?
• Knowledge workers must interact. This is due partly to sweeping change – one person cannot be expert in all aspects – and partly to the need for overcoming the pitfalls of subjectivity. The compulsion creates professional needs that personnel today must self-organize to satisfy, thereby using up their limited energy and time. The alternative is inefficient working. My work executes a smart way of categorizing and working per Knowledge maps and teamwork norms respectively. It satisfies the following professional needs without taxing the workers:
  • An easy, competent and comprehensive means for interaction. As compared to email my infrastructure delivers far superior and appealing conduct of the daily business communication across the enterprise, e.g., anytime, anywhere, offline, anticipation of the next step, smart execution, organization structure awareness with x-boundary movement, focus per need, and IT tools pertinent to the context. Extra computer literacy is not required. This primary delivery overcomes opposition to change that disfavors even offers of exciting new and valuable benefits.
  • Rapid overview of work-in-process with its expectations, coordination with fellow personnel, and total access to the Knowledge that has accumulated on an event with details regardless of:
    • The chaos created by spontaneous interactions, cross boundary movements, the number of personnel in the loop, ad-hoc processes, the density of interactions, and impracticality of controls.
    • The rush of events.
    • Continuity on an issue irrespective of the number of events that have transpired on it and the time for which it has remained in active consideration.
    • Freedom from pressure created by limited work time, the volume of pending work, and the anxiety to execute work efficiently. It requires facility to:
      • Work at convenience, even offline for temporary periods, without any extra effort.
      • Rapidly drill down to important issues.
      • Follow administrative procedures effortlessly.
      • The need to supervise known process related anxieties.
      • Manage time and performance parameters to the extent possible.
      • Pursue effective follow-up and exercise control over action.
      • A means for consensus/decision on each event with emphasis on perspective of team leaders.
      • Smart exploitation of emerging technology, without mastery of its incidence, for effortless conduct of work and related interaction.
      • The confidence of engaging in secure means for interacting and record keeping.
      • Effortless means to accumulate and study the history of structural changes, issues and flow of opinions thereon.
      • A process to penetrate the façade on events and refrain from the obvious response as it very often misleads decision-making:
        • Each Event: Clear statement of Facts and alternate Opinions to stretch the comfort zone for preventing the lazy, ignorant or presumptuous response.
        • Each Event: Focus on the inherent Assumptions in the Opinion stated and Feedback on expressed Opinion for emerging consensus.
        • Each Event: A means to question apparent generalizations.
        • Events: Readily explore support for an idea with means to survey the archives for identifying where it may exist.

The Knowledge Assembly Line makes the worker central to the conduct of Management. This makes it the key enabler of the empowerment emphasized in my Barrier 'Change from within is a citadel that must be stormed – from within'.  The Assembly Line  thus organizes to enrich the human mind by empowering instead of denuding its substance like the Mechanical Line. Empowerment is deeply related to the one Management Wisdom that perhaps incorporates all others: Knowledge Workers need to be given their Freedom for raising their achievement.

My hack 'Compelling Energy for a quantum jump in organization performance with the same resources' explains how I have harnessed IT to organize and effortlessly drive the Knowledge Assembly Line.