In the digital age, it has never been more important for organisations to unlock the potential of our human resources and unleash the power of the team.
Technology continues to present opportunities for transforming how people live and work. But organisational hierarchy and the way we think about leadership needs to catch up and join us in the digital age.
According to Peter Drucker, hailed as the father of modern management, “knowledge workers are individuals who know more about the work that they perform than their bosses”.
In this context, how can a manager attempt to oversee or even coordinate the technical activities of people who are infinitely more capable than they are of defining the tasks necessary to accomplish their mission and provide customers with what they expect?
Author and motivational expert Daniel Pink’s attempts to answer this question in his book, Drive. According to Pink, the problem is with the incentives that businesses provide to try and motivate their staff. Pay aside, he states that there are three things businesses can do to really unlock workers’ potential:
Smart organisations embrace a culture that embodies the above. The resulting rise of the knowledge worker can be evidenced by the organisations who are now recognising and rewarding key workers to the same standards as their senior managers.
No longer does the only option for promotion mean moving away from ‘doing’ in favour of becoming a people manager. Now, talent is able to progress up the pay scale while exploiting their digital mindset and skills like design thinking, entrepreneurial approaches to learning, and agile and lean delivery.
To support this new structure, digital organisations are changing the way projects and teams are managed. Work is being allocated to established teams rather than individuals in temporary project structures, creating a ‘team of teams’ approach.
Organisations are also identifying the value of the agile Product Owner model, whereby a team member is responsible for identifying priorities and enabling the team to self-organise around the work, rather than having a figure of seniority who allocates tasks.
This team-level enablement and empowerment is key in unlocking the potential of digital knowledge workers. Decisions are still made based on a clearly identified vision and list of priorities, based on a deep understanding of each customers’ needs.
But the move away from an autocratic ‘command and control’ culture leads to an environment where team members are free to work with autonomy and innovate to find the best solution for the customer and the organisation.
For large, established organisations, championing the rise of the digital knowledge worker will mean a cultural transformation that will likely cut to the very core of their business model.
But done successfully, an organisation will reap the many rewards of empowering staff to develop their own skillset while putting the clients’ needs at the heart of their work.
Can you afford not to unlock the potential of your digital knowledge workers?
Symon Cusack is Principle Consultant for Atkins Global.
