knowledgeworker - Driessen Samuel on Diigo

10 Nov 09

Unfortunately, the productivity measures for collaboration workers are fuzzy at best. For production workers, productivity is readily measured in terms of units of output; for transaction workers, in operations per hour. But for knowledge workers, what might be thought of as collaboration productivity depends on the quality and quantity of interactions occurring.
The interactive graphic that accompanies this article provides a synthesis of our view on how organizations can improve collaboration.
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- As a first step, companies should take a fresh look at their workers, classifying them by how they collaborate. We have identified 12 types of collaboration work (see the interactive exhibit, “Collaboration types and tools”). Each of these is broken down into the day-to-day interactive activities (or workflows) that comprise these work classes. Today most organizations segment their employees by their positions within the corporate hierarchy. They are identified by job titles that, in many cases, obscure the kind of work they actually do.

Also mentions Dunbar number

The conclusion I’ve arrived at recently is easy to state: Enterprise 2.0 is most valuable at the outer rings of the target.
I say this for two main reasons. First, prior to the arrival of ESSPs the IT toolkit available at the outer rings was both small and ineffective.
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- The second main reason for my conclusion is that outer-ring ESSPs bring substantial benefits, and ones that are difficult to achieve any other way. In other words, it’s not just that good outer-ring tools are new; it’s that they’re new and powerful.
- When knowledge workers author and link to each other, searchers can locate them and assess their knowledge and expertise.
- discussed in my book, is that they might let users get past Dunbar’s number, the theoretical maximum number social group size

05 Nov 09

02 Nov 09

30 Oct 09

Harold Jarche has developed a model for thinking about PKM in terms of the internal knowledge activities (sort, categorize, make explicit, retrieve) and the external activities (connect, exchange, and contribute). He goes on to list which social tools support internal activities vs. external activities; for example he aligns the use of social bookmarks (deli.cio.us and Diigo) as follows:

07 Oct 09

02 Oct 09

01 Oct 09

1. Be truly specific. General compliments like "Great job!" or "Excellent presentation!" surely have their place, especially as you hurry to your next meeting. But precise feedback does much more, both for the ego of the recipient and for the quality of her future work.
2. Don't confuse politeness with praise.
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- Such verbal gestures often play an important role in maintaining the cooperative tone of a workplace. But if that quotidian tone sounds a lot like the one you use to praise someone's work, the line between daily politeness and substantive appreciation starts to blur.
- 3. Praise with action, not just words. After you've told someone precisely what she did well and demonstrated your keen understanding of its value, have her build on it with a follow-up task.
- 4. Don't pad constructive criticism with empty praise.
- a critique ends up undercutting the value of the authentic praise you give in other contexts.