What’s your response to the order to jump?
Posted on: July 26, 2011
As the CeL prepares to say Happy Retirement to one of our most senior staff members, I am reminded one thing that he said in his farewell speech.
One of the biggest changes the department has been subjected to is the move from being production workers to knowledge workers.
True. I want my staff to think, to educate our stakeholders, and to challenge established but irrelevant ways of doing things.
But just what does “knowledge work” entail? I’ll paraphrase a quotation that I read yesterday in Learning Solutions magazine.
You know you are engaging in knowledge work when know-how and know-what is supplemented with know-why, know-who, know-where and know-when.
It is changing your response to the command to jump. In the past it might have been, “Yes, sir! How high should I jump?”
Now it might be why should I jump, who might do it better, under what circumstances jumping is advisable or not, and when one should jump (if at all).
