The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century is to increase the productivity of knowledge work and the knowledge worker.
Peter F. Drucker
[Knowledge and Learning Solutions]
Which probably needs to start with some hard thinking about what constitutes productivity in knowledge work. Output/input isn't going to help very much now is it?
[McGee's Musings]
A very good point. I think about decision making. I know, you said in your 25+ years of business you've probably only made 200 decisions, but I think you're talking on a grander scale - I think about decisions at a more basic level. I decide how to right a proposal, how much time a task takes and what skills are required, how to counsel an individual, how much work to put into researching an issue, what is "good enough" (with regards to anything), how to debug a software problem, what the implicit demand curve, etc. etc. etc. I think even ideas are decisions in the sense that you filter through all sorts of combinations of information and decide which have merit.
In fact, I'll suggest you could think of knowledge workers as "decision engines" where knowledge is the fuel. At the end of the day, we are paid for the judgment we exercise in our respective areas of knowledge work with the intention that good judgment leads to better business results. In this sense, productivity is about the quality of our judgment and "knowledge management" is about helping people to leverage all of the knowledge assets around them in order ot improve "productivity".
Thoughts?
PS - I captured this quote in preparation for our pitch to the GMA on why a Knowledge Management club is important at Kellogg. We are seeking official approval on Monday night.
7:47:42 PM 
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