A New Way to Think

7

Knowledge Work

You must organize around projects, not jobs.

Companies everywhere struggle with the management of knowledge workers. They compete fiercely to find and retain the best talent, often accumulating thousands of managers in the process. For a while this is fine, but inevitably, usually when economic conditions turn less favorable, they realize that these expensive workers are not as productive as hoped, and in an effort to manage costs they lay off a large swath of them. Soon after, though, they’re out recruiting again.

This cycle is highly destructive. Aside from the human and social costs involved, it is extremely inefficient for a company to manage any resource this way, let alone one that is widely recognized as the engine ...