Industrial capitalism followed the mercantilism to attend, with the 21st century, to the advent of cognitive capitalism and the proclamation of a new type of worker: the knowledge worker (the one who works primarily with information or develops and uses knowledge in the workplace. We find him at all levels and positions in the company.
What does the studies say about it?
The knowledge worker spends up to 30% of his time searching for data. (Butler Group)
Only 44% of users in a company find the files they are internally searching for. If we refer to research on the Internet, 86% of users are satisfied with what they find. (Forrester)
Managers spend 2hrs per day searching for information. 50% of the information they find is not useful. (Accenture)
For a team with 5 members (The Cegos Observatory, study about a panel of european managers)
The cost of making decisions is on average 25 000 € / year and 30 to 50% of the time is spent by managers exchanging documents.
These studies show that the time spent processing information (financial reports, managerial operation, monitoring, projects and files set up, emails, etc…) is important in volume and however needed to make decisions.
The advent of the Internet represents a major change in our practices. The information is rapidly and massively available. Decision making is improved, if we have the means and resources to qualify the information.The implementation and monitoring of the decisions are also affected. Indeed, it is tempting. Information is there, ready to be exploited. We always want more. The result is an excessive reporting, difficult to use, analyze, and quickly becomes time consuming.
Types of work organization that evolve
What is required to be manager? Often to do better and more with less resources. Develop creativity and commitment to his mission. Integrate, motivate and stimulate teams. Earn productivity points. Teams need to be reactive, to react quickly and adapt themselves to the different situations.
It is a fact that types of work organization are evolving. Project mode is dominant. Transversal projects are being developed. Teams are bringing together people from different professions to cooperate, collaborate and work remotely. Different work cultures are mixed. Agility is a must.
Making and implement decisions has a cost. And what about its impact on efficiency?
The emerging problem is how to absorb the increasing amount of information to process, keeping a good level of productivity and efficiency in projects implementation?
Management 2.0
As it is often, the reaction is to turn to the development of new tools. The trend in recent years is called “2.0”.
F. Fréry (in Le Management 2.0 ou la fin de l’entreprise) explains quite well how collaborative technologies from Web 2.0 are applied to management issues, namely to:
- collection and processing of information
- problem solving
- creativity
- investment choices
- decision making
Our years as Managers have shown us how hard it is to avoid being invaded by processing information. We think about these reporting sessions with our teams managed remotely. Collect information on friday by email with a spreadsheet support. Then decoding and compiling the information during good part of the weekend. Then on Monday, the calls for the ones who are late or some last minute questions. Then the review via telephone with our n+1, etc…
All the time spent in something we call “small town news” and not being with our teams and in contact with our customers.
Maybe it is time to review our methods and tools?
English Translation by Paula Andrea Gómez Gutiérrez (web marketing – Advanseez)
Photo Source : From Flick By teresadelli
Updated By Christophe Hervé on: Jun 14, 2019
maybe the largest part of management 2.0 is primarily a collaborative, cooperative experience, and the “management” bit of it is decision making, which now seems more emergent than directive.