1、原文二 ： Management Challenges for the 21st Century The most important, and indeed the truly unique, contribution of management in the 20th century was the fifty-fold increase in the productivity of the manual worker in manufacturing. The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st
2、 century is similarly to increase the productivity of knowledge work and the knowledge worker. The most valuable assets of a 20th-century company were its production equipment. The most valuable asset of a 21st-century institution, whether business or nonbusiness, will be its knowledge workers and t
3、heir productivity. What We Know Abaout Known Workers Productivity Work on the productivity of the knowledge workers has barely begun. In the terms of actual work on knowledge worker productivity we are.In 2000, roughly where we were in the year 1900, a century ago, in terms of the productivity of ma
4、nual worker. But we already know infinitely more about the productivity of the knowledge workers than we did then about that of the manual worker. We even know a good many of the answers. But we also know the challenges to which we do not yet know the answers, and on which we need to go to work. Six
5、 major factors determine knowledge worker productivity. 1. Knowledge worker productivity demands that we ask the question: What is the task? 2. It demands that we impose the responsibility for their productivity on the individual knowledge workers themselves. Knowledge workers have to manage themsel
6、ves. They have to have authonomy. 3. Continuing innovation has to be part of the work, the task and the responsibility of knowledge workers. 4. Knowledge work requires continuous learning on the part of the knowledge worker, but equally continuous teaching on the part of the knowledge worker. 5. Pro
7、ductivity of the knowledge worker is not-at least not primarily-a matter of the quantity of output. Quality is at least as important. 6. Finally, knowledge worker productivity requires that the knowledge worker is both seen and treated as an asset rather than a cost. It requires that knowledge worke
8、rs want to work for the organization in preference to all other opportunities. Each of these requirements-except perhaps the last one-is almost the exact opposite of what is needed to increase the productivity of the manual worker. In maranual work quality also matters. But lack of quality is a rest
9、raint. There has to be a certain minimum quality standard. The achievement of Total Quality Management to manual work, is the ability to cut ( though not entirely to eliminate ) production that falls below this minimum standard. But in most knowledge work, qualitly is not a minimum and a restraint.
10、Quality is the essence of the output. In judging the performance of a teacher, we do not ask how many students there can be in his or her class. We ask how many students learn anything-and that is a quality question. Inappraising the performance of a medical laboratory, the question of how many test
11、s it can run through its machines is quite secondary to the question of how many tests results are valid and reliable. And this is true even for the work of the file clerk. Productivity of knowledge work therefore has to aim first at obtaining quality-and not minimum quality but optimum if not maxim
12、um quality. Only then can one ask: What is the volume,the quantity of work ? This not only means that we approach the task of making productive the knowledge worker from the quality of the work rather than quantity. It also means that have to learn to define quality. What Is The Task? The first requ
13、irement in tackling knowledge worker is to find out what the task is so as to make it possible to concentrate knowledge worker on the task and to eliminate everything else-at least as far as it can possibly be elminated. But this then requires that knowledge workers themselves defined what the task
14、is or should be. And only knowledge workers themselves can do that. Work on knowledge-workers productivity therefore begins, whith asking the knowledge-workers themselves: What is your task? What should it be? What shoud you be exsepcted to contribute? What hampers you in doing your task and shoud b
15、e eliminated? Knowledge workers themselves almost always have thoughe though these questions and can answer them. Still, it then usually takes time and hard work to restructure their job so that they can actually make them the contribution they are already being paid for. But, asking the questions a
16、nd taking action on the answers usually doubles or triples knowledge-worker productivity, and quite fast. Once the task has been defined ,the next requirements can be tsckled-and will be tackled by the knowledge workers themselves. They are: 1. Knowledge workersresponsibility for their own contribut
17、ion-the knowledge workers decision what he or she should be held accountable for in terms of quality and quantity, in respect to time and in respect to cost. Knowledge workers have to autonomy, and that entails responsibility. 2. Continuous innovation has to be built into the knowledge workers job.
18、3. Continuous learning and continuous teaching have to be built into the job. What is quality? In some knowledge work and especially in some work requiring a high-level knowledge, we already measure quality. But by and large we have , so far, mainly judgments rather than measures regarding the quali
19、ty of a great deal of knowledge worker. The main trouble is, however, not the difficulty of measuring quality. It is the difficult-and more particularly the sharp disagreements-in defining what the task is and what it should be. To define quality in knowledge work and to convert the definition into
20、knowledge worker productivity is thus to a large extent of defining the task. It requires the difficult, risk-taking and always controversial definition as to what results are for a given enterprise and a given activity. We therefore actually know how to do it. Still, the question is a tatally new o
21、ne of mostorgnizations, and also for most knowledge workers. And to answer it requires controversy, requires dissent. The Knowelge Worker as Capital Asset To be productive, knowledge workers must be considered a capital asset. Costs need to be controlled and reduced. Assets need to be made to grow.
22、But, short of the costs of turnover, rehiring or retraining and so on, the manual worker is still being seen as a cost. This is true even in Japan, despite the emphasis on lifetime employment and on building a loyal, permanent workfore. And short of the cost of turnover, the management of people at work, based on millennia of work
