A week ago I attended the Women In Technology event ‘The Business Value of Social Media’ to see my friend Eileen Brown speak on exploiting social media. Women In Technology have a strong interest in both family-friendly work practices as well as knowledge economy trends. As a bonus, Euan Semple also spoke covering a range of business benefits to social media. The highlight of the evening for me was the quote on his slide by Peter Drucker…

“In the knowledge economy everyone is a volunteer, but we have trained our managers to manage conscripts.”

This insight gets at the heart of Dynamic Work and its productivity benefits. Many companies I speak recoil at the thought of more flexible work practices because they look at their workforce through the lens that everyone is a conscript. They think that as long as you keep and eye on everyone’s activity and crack the whip, the people should feel lucky to have a job and everything will go smoothly.

What that naive presumption misses is how much variation in work output and quality one can manifest in a knowledge worker role without a sign. In short, the unmotivated knowledge workers can hit your business where the marks won’t show. If you someone digging ditches or hammering rivets, then it is quite obvious when a slacker is not throwing dirt or cracking a girder. But it you are processing information, creating content, using systems, solving problems, writing code, then the most observant manager in the world can’t really tell the difference between a diligent worker beavering away from an indolent daydreamer staring blankly at their screen.

And for the more proactively unproductive, there are tools and technologies to help them be even more delinquent. My favourite is CBS Sport’s March Madness’ ‘Boss Button’.

The issue is sort of the converse of the ‘Quality Time’ which is about creating the Dynamic Work environment which does maximise the true productivity. ‘Boss Button’ is about the futility of trying to minimise the loss of productivity through conventional methods in the knowledge economy.