Effectiveness of knowledge workers

The term "manager" broadly refers to knowledge workers, managers and professionals who, due to their position and knowledge, must make decisions at work that affect overall performance and results.

In fact, each of us is managing ourselves. In addition to managing subordinates, managers in organizations also manage themselves.

Effectiveness is a special skill for knowledge workers. For manual workers, we may only value efficiency. The so-called efficiency can be said to be the ability to "do things right" rather than The ability to “do the right thing.” Generally, it can be measured by quality and quantity. For example, how many pieces of clothing a garment factory produces in a day and what is the quality.

There is a contradiction here. The New Yorker magazine published a cartoon with a slogan on it: Think. The picture shows a soap company manager with his feet on his desk and his face facing the ceiling blowing smoke rings. People outside the door happened to pass by, and one of them said: "God knows if he is thinking about our soap problem!"

So, no one knows what the knowledge worker is thinking, but thinking is his nature Points, thinking is working. To measure the effectiveness of his work is to see whether he has achieved anything.

Knowledge work cannot be measured by quantity or cost. Efforts should be measured primarily by results, not by the size of the organization or the complexity of management.

The realities that managers must face are:

1. Managers’ time often belongs only to others, not to themselves. Every subordinate could come to him and every phone call had to be answered.

2. Managers are often forced to be busy with "daily operations." After some managers are promoted to general manager, their main job is the decision-making and operation of the entire company, but often they cannot avoid supervising other tasks such as marketing or production.

3. The manager himself is in an organization, and a manager is only effective when others can make use of the manager's contribution. Each manager has his own specialties, for example some are good at finance and some are good at training. These can be absorbed by tissues.

4. Managers are limited by the organization. Managers can only understand the external world through data reports, but these reports are also subjectively processed.

Only by facing these realities, constantly conducting self-management, and doing what they should do well can the work of managers be effective.