Thinking for a Living

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What’s a Knowledge Worker, Anyway?

Robin feels out of control. She’s the head of press and analyst relations for a large professional services firm. Eight people report to her, all of them knowledge workers. Some deal with particular types of press relationships, others with technology industry analysts. She manages some relationships herself. Her job is to improve her company’s image with these external audiences—even to her, a somewhat vague and difficult-to-measure mission.

Only half of the people on her staff are with her at headquarters in New York, and only one of the four in New York are on her floor. They’re all pretty independent in their work habits, and she doesn’t see most of them very often. Several of them frequently work ...