Brain Teasing
In the early industrial age, men in white coats would walk around factories with watches and clipboards measuring the time it took workers to perform specific tasks. These "time-and-motion" experts set out to 1 labour productivity, and thence to improve it. The sort of jobs they were measuring, however, 2 longer enjoy such a premium in the places 3 they measured them: less than 10% of today"s jobs in America are in manufacturing, and less than 15% of 4 in Britain.
Workers of the western world are now employed largely in service industries, where they are paid 5 their brain rather than their brawn. Many of them can be called "knowledge workers"—between a quarter and a half.
Knowledge workers are those whose primary tasks 6 the manipulation of knowledge and information. These people are the creators of 7 in western economies today, yet 8 anybody is measuring their output and seeking ways to 9 it. Somebody should. Finding ways to improve the productivity of knowledge workers is one of the most important economic 10 of our time. Management"s 11 role is to make knowledge more 12 .
Little has happened in the intervening time, partly 13 this is not an 14 task. There are no time-and-motion 15 that can measure how many thoughts go 16 knowledge workers" heads or the value of their creative 17 . Does that therefore mean that companies must (as most of them have until now) leave these valuable assets entirely to their 18 devices, to work as each of them sees fit 19 they, their employers, merely stand and wait
The answer to this question does not have to be 20 . Some companies have tried to make their knowledge workers more productive. By looking at the ways in which different workers use knowledge, we could build a framework within which companies can start thinking about how to make the process more productive.