In my other article about the Idea Economy that is coming there was an important part missing: What is the difference between a knowledge economy professional and an idea economy professional.
And that is a fair remark, the lines are blurred.
Depending on what you are doing, and which industry you are in, already the tendencies are transforming jobs and pushing people more and more towards becoming Idea Economy professionals.
With this article I'd like to explore some of the differences.
Is your job about following formulas or having new ideas?
As a first pass (I expect I will need other articles to explore this) I think it is useful to make the distinction if your job is about following the same formula or is it about thinking up new ways to solve problems.
Formulas: Scientific management and compliance
Much of education and working in big corporations is about compliance. Why is that?
Most of this started with a guy called Frederick Winslow Taylor who came up with the idea of scientific management.
Although much admired, this theory has a lot of holes in it.
Regardless, it became the bedrock of how most companies are managed! It is difficult to underestimate how much this theory has influenced our concept of how businesses are supposed to be run.
In essence, it treated the organisation and the people in it as one big machine.
To make it work, you make sure you design the components for their function and you make sure that they meet "specifications". If they don't you replace components (humans) with others that do meet the "specification".
The logical conclusion from this kind of worldview is that if everyone follows "the formula" or process, things will work fine.
It presupposes though that all conditions remain the same, and that the "designer" of all this is clever enough to make the perfect organisation and production process.
It also completely disregards human psychology in just about all aspects that matters and tries to brute force people into compliance with the formula. It also kind of treats people as machines and pays little attention to people who do the actual work.
If the formula did not work and there is a problem with production, then probably peoples behaviour was not controlled enough, so more rules and regulations were created to make sure "people do what they are supposed to do"
When removed from the factory floor, this translates to bureaucracy
bureaucracy ˌbjʊ(ə)ˈrɒkrəsi/ noun
- excessively complicated administrative procedure.
"the unnecessary bureaucracy in local government"
synonyms: red tape, rules and regulations, etiquette, protocol, officialdom, (unnecessary) paperwork; humorous bumbledom
"the unnecessary bureaucracy in local government"
There is an inherent arrogance in this approach of course. It assumes you can from a top down level design the perfect system and then make everyone conform to that.
Of course this works for a while, but these kinds of organisations simply refuse to accept the possibility that the formula is outdated and the basic assumptions need to be looked at.
Most people's job today is about following a formula, sure that formula is tweaked once in a while but few organisations are willing to look at the basic assumptions of their business process and business model and aren't willing to change their business model. The classic example is Kodak, which invented the very thing that eventually put them out of business.
Education: About producing compliant workers mostly
Check out Pink Floyd's Another brick in the wall, says it all really:
Education, despite all the lofty aspirations, was mostly designed to meet the demands of the economy, what we got was:
- A system that applied mass production principles to people: bringing everybody up to "standard" as if they are widgets turned out by a factory.
- A system that inherently was organised to prepare people to work on factory floors, teaching obedience and indirectly the norms and regulations that go with factory life: Everything is timed, the bell rules everyone. you should obey your teachers or you get "punished".
- The teacher "i.e. management" knows best, challenging their doctrine is not welcome (or you get invited to talk to the principal"
- Quality control, you must meet specifications through tests or you are "rejected" as being without value.
- topics and subjects taught in school are still about what is deemed to be "useful" to function in the industrial economy. Maths and science, some language skills,
School actually teaches you surprising little about what you need to function as a human in society: Personal finance, dangers of "investing", how to handle money, food knowledge and its impact on health, basic psychology and philosophy, human relationships and knowledge about your own cognitive processes and biases, creative problem-solving, how to deal with technology, how to think about learning and unlearning, how to learn much faster.
As a result most high school graduates leave school dangerously naive about life. Studies have shown actually 95% percent of "knowledge" taught in school is forgotten (maybe that's for the best, it is mostly obsolete anyway)
The underlying thinking here is that "everything will be all right if workers just do what they are told": that is what compliance is about.
Who tells them ? "Management".
This implies that "management" knows best how to design the process and if something goes wrong, it is because people did not do what they are told.
It assumes that it is possible to design the "ideal process" in advance and it treats people a s interchangeable Workforce. Programmable machines that you tell what to do. No original thought or input is either required or even wanted from the "worker".
I'm sure you see some problems with this attitude.
Things have moved on:
Here is James Altucher's take on it:
Tony Wagner is a guy who has been looking into this from the education side:
From this post http://www.tonywagner.com/244he relates an interview where he asks someone from a big company what they are looking for today when hiring new people
“First and foremost, I look for someone who asks good questions,” Parker responded. “We can teach them the technical stuff, but we can’t teach them how to ask good questions—how to think.”
“What other skills are you looking for?” I asked, expecting that he’d jump quickly to content expertise.
“I want people who can engage in good discussion—who can look me in the eye and have a give and take. All of our work is done in teams. You have to know how to work well with others. But you also have to know how to engage customers—to find out what their needs are. If you can’t engage others, then you won’t learn what you need to know.”
Does that sound like a person coming from the current education system? It would probably not have been on purpose...
Here are skills Tony Wagner has Identified that are currently in demand:
http://www.tonywagner.com/7-survival-skills
How are you doing with these survival skills?
Does your current job require you to apply these skills? Or are you forced to follow formulas and be obedient?
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