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| Thinking for a Living: How to Get Better Performances And Results from Knowledge Workers | 
| Author: Thomas H. Davenport
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Category: Book
List Price: $27.50
Buy New: $23.34
You Save: $4.16 (15%)
New (4) from $23.34
Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 1439528
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.2 x 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.3
ASIN: B0015IZ2OA
Publication Date: September 30, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new book
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Product Description
Knowledge workers create the innovations and strategies that keep their firms competitive and the economy healthy. Yet companies continue to manage this new breed of employee with techniques designed for the Industrial Age. As this critical sector of the workforce continues to increase in size and importance, that's a mistake that could cost companies their future. Thomas Davenport argues that knowledge workers are vastly different from other types of workers in their motivations, attitudes, and need for autonomy - and so they require different management techniques to improve their performance and productivity. Based on extensive research involving over one hundred companies and more than six hundred knowledge workers, "Thinking for a Living" provides rich insights into how knowledge workers think, how they accomplish tasks, and what motivates them to excel. Davenport identifies four major categories of knowledge workers and presents a unique framework for matching specific types of workers with the management strategies that yield the greatest performance. Written by the field's premier thought leader, "Thinking for a Living" reveals how to maximize the brain power that fuels organizational success.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
 Thinking for a Living September 25, 2008
Item was received in a timely manner and was in excellent condition as the seller described. I am very satisfied.
Excellent Buy - A must have September 17, 2007
I have read a number of Tom's books, but this one beats them all (I am saving up to buy another one!). The knowledge worker is an essential ingredient for innovation. Fascinating title, well prepared and perfectly laid out thoughts and a simple style writing makes this book a choice material for anyone seeking personal development or involved in self-directed learning. This book is a true blessing and I am glad I bought it. It is a steady reference for my knowledge management project and hopefully, practice.
The average knowledge worker believes in his skills and he can not be taken for granted. Davenport describes the knowledge worker's attributes fully and provides employers and senior management a new direction on how to view their organizational assets. It also helps the knowledge worker to realize his potentialities. After reading this book, my motivaion to improve myself has been further enhanced. Indeed, KM is an essential strategy for supporting performance
 You have got to be kidding? July 20, 2007
I endeavor to follow the addage that if you have nothing nice to say then say nothing; however, this work is redundant, virtually devoid of any actionable insights, and smacks of a self indulgent attempt to justify his own ideosycratic work habits. I kept going in hopes that one concept would justify my investment of mind. The only return on my investment is a book I can now confindently refer to those I distain and assiduously warn those I adore to avoid.
I am fairly sure the majority of previous reviews are from nodes in his social network who have seized upon his scintilating suggestion that effective knowledge workers maintain and nuture their relationships by treating them well. It is sycophantic myopia when work which could and should be great barely achieves mediocracy receives any praise whatsoever.
If Mr. Davenport reads these words please know that I harbor no ill will to you personally I just found this particular publication of your work seriously wanting.
Insightful and pragmatic May 26, 2007
Though he starts with a fuzzy definition of knowledge workers, Thomas Davenport quickly gets to the point where his ideas are both illuminating and practical. His logical structure covering multiple approaches to improving the performance of knowledge workers both changes some foundations upon which to approach the task and also provides many practical ideas to implement.
Having focussed for many years on process improvement in software projects, I found his insights on the difference betwen professional practice and process improvement very helpful. The discussion on information technology covered a range of tools, and included some inspiring examples. There is certainly another book or few just on this topic. Completing the books with the topic of managing knowledge workers at first appeared out of order, but upon a second reading the flow of his ideas started to make sense.
Overall, Thinking for a Living has been inspiring and useful. I would recommend it to anyone who manages knowledge workers, or aims to improve their performance. And as Mr. Davenport argues, that is an important aim for just about all companies in the rich countries.
Must-read if you have any Knowledge Workers in your company November 9, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Knowledge Workers are those people whose main professional output is Knowledge. Because all work requires some knowledge, the boundary can be arbitrary. So, depending on where you draw the line, Knowledge Workers represent to 1/3 of the labor force in the developed world. Doctors, lawyers, researchers, consultants, and computer programmers all share this trait.
We saw (in Corporate Longitude by Leif Edvinsson and Intangibles by Baruch Lev) that the market value of all publicly traded companies exceeded the market value of their tangible assets sometime in the early 90's. This gap has grown ever since. We assume that Knowledge accumulated inside a company is responsible for a good part of this difference. Ergo, our Knowledge Workers represent a very important, if mostly intangible, asset.
Because their main output is Knowledge, you can't quite measure what they are doing. If one of your best Knowledge Workers says she has her best ideas in the shower, you have no choice but to take her word for it. Knowledge Workers resist most controls on their quality and productivity. Sometimes this resistance is built into the rules of their professional associations (check out the rules and regulations of any legal or medical association and you'll witness this). Most Knowledge Workers hate bureaucracy and hierarchy. Some Knowledge Workers do not run on money: they prefer to be compensated with, for example, easier access to Knowledge.
Trouble is, our management models have changed little since the Industrial Revolution, so they're uniquely inadequate for managing Knowledge Workers. In fact, because the person who manages Knowledge Workers is in most cases a Knowledge Worker him/herself, this suggests that the ideal management model for Knowledge Workers must contain a "Player/Coach" flavor.
Enter Prof. Davenport, who has dedicated the past several years to the study of Knowledge Workers. This book distills most of what he has learned, and has a wealth of references to those who need more detail.
Knowledge Workers cannot easily be grouped into one category. One important lesson throughout the book is that, when coming to grips with the Knowledge Workers inside your company, you must segment them into different groups. After all, because Knowledge can be invented, discovered, packaged, distributed, or consumed, each Knowledge Worker you deal with will be active in one or more, but rarely all, of these activities. Prof Davenport proposes a basic taxonomy for this, with two dimensions: the level of interdependence among Knowledge Workers, and the level of Complexity of the work itself. This in turn spawns four basic models:
*Transaction Model (low interdependence, low complexity): The Knowledge Worker is essentially by him/herself and most of the situations he/she faces are repetitive. This is the only segment where "scripting" (ie, standard, pre-rehearsed speeches covering the most common situations) is effective. A good example of this is the 0800 customer-support people in a software company.
*Integration Model (high interdependence, low complexity): The task is repeatable but integration is critical, both intra-team and across disciplines. In this segment, the key is to establish tight process routines and standards. The best example of this is geologist/geophysicist/drilling engineer teams in oil&gas exploration.
*Expert Model (high complexity, low interdependence): Performance here is highly reliant on a person who contains most if not all the necessary Knowledge. Still, these people might profit from easy access to databases containing similar situations that took place in the past. Trial attorneys, systems analysts, and some types of medical doctors are excellent examples of this model.
*Collaboration Model (high complexity, high interdependence): People in these teams feel they're improvising all the time, when in fact there's an enormous degree of judgement in every decision made. This is the most difficult type of Knowledge-Worker team to improve in any organized way. Structured-deals teams in Investment Banks are probably the best example of this.
He is the first to admit that the above model is only a very basic first approach. When you do this in your company, you may find two or three of the above. Also, look out for hybrid situations. For example, a neurosurgeon fits the Expert model (without him, there's no surgery), but his supporting team (nurses, anesthesiologists, etc) fits the Collaboration model.
Prof. Davenport strongly encourages people to quickly move beyond the above models and develop their own Knowledge Worker segmentation models, and then to develop and use different management, performance-metrics, office-space, recruitment, remuneration, retention, succession, and IT-support strategies for each segment.
One set of research findings described in the book will not surprise most of us: business-process reengineering, a consulting buzzword in the past decade, has probably done more harm than good to the Knowledge Worker community.
The book also dispels some myths about Knowledge Workers with some hard research performed by Prof. Davenport and colleagues: for example, surprisingly few of them prefer to tele-commute (explanation: interaction among Knowledge Workers is critical to their success). Another interesting example is that they're not as much into electronic gadgets as we, coming from a geek stereotype, all thought.
Because it summarizes the author's past publications and research, the writing can be of variable quality, and progress from one chapter to the next is not exactly seamless, but neither of these foibles is enough to detract from the overall impact of a very timely and important book.
Some people may be offended by the summary at the end of each chapter; they didn't bother me, knowing there are so many print-challenged executives around us.
Highly recommended. Executive coaches dealing with technical teams may find this book invaluable.
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