Slides from Alison Freer's talk for BCS Elite Leeds on 3rd November 2011

1. IT Leaders at the
Vanguard of 21st
Century Productivity:
Overcoming Knowledge Worker
Attention Deficit Disorder
Alison Freer, Director - Lead & Transform
3rd November 2011 - BCS Elite Leeds

2. Today
• Assessing the benefits of improving
knowledge worker productivity
• Sharing top tips for making theory work
in practice
• How IT can lead the productivity
revolution.

3. Attention Deficit
• E-mail, MS Office used for 30+hours
per week
• 20 - 200+++ emails received a day
• 150 hours per year, per person
looking for lost information
• 80% corporate information is
unstructured - terabytes of it!
Gartner 2005

4. Productivity Gap
• 10:1 difference in
productivity amongst
software organisations
• The best people
outperform the worst by
10:1
• The best performer is
about 2.5 times better
than the median
Tom DeMarco 1999

5. Drucker’s Prophecy
“the unique contribution of
management in the 20th
century was the 50 fold
improvement in the
productivity of manual
workers…....

6. “....the most important contribution
management needs to make in the
21st Century is to similarly increase
the productivity of knowledge
workers”.
Peter Drucker 1999

7. ‘Thinking for a Living’
Thomas Davenport, HBR 2005

8. Knowledge Workers..
• Like autonomy
• Value their knowledge but
don’t always share easily
• Find it hard to explain the
detail of what they do
• Add maximum value when
they collaborate.

9. Productive People...
• Limit the number of gadgets
• Invest effort in deciding
priority information &
organising it well
• Get help & use assistants, to
some degree
• Use lists
• Adapt tools & approaches
to suit different situations

10. ‘I-shaped’ People
Deep subject
knowledge, applied to
problem-solving in
specific domains.
Needs... time & space
to think, perfect, test
and research.

11. ‘T-shaped’ People
Broad subject interests,
plus core expertise,
drawn to maximising
opportunities in
complex business
environments.
Needs... interaction, to
share & learn from
others.

12. Table Talk
• What does
knowledge worker
productivity mean
in your
organisation?
• How do you
measure it?

13. Maximising Knowledge
Worker Productivity
• Treat knowledge workers as
assets not costs
• Physical & virtual
workplaces to ‘bump’
together
• Expose to learning &
teaching
• Automate their routine
tasks

14. The Hybrid Organisation
Economic Demographic
Uncertainty Change
WORKPLACE
THE HYBRID
ORGANISATION
TECHNOLOGY PEOPLE
Social &
Mass
Business Tech
Globalisation
Innovations
Microsoft 2011

15. Top Tip #1- Listen
• Software Studio Team -
variable productivity. Over &
under utilisation of different
individuals
• 1:1 mentoring followed by
facilitated team project
events.
• Identified productivity
enablers & blockers for
different personalities.

16. Top Tip #2- Engage
• Public sector IT department,
facing out-sourcing test
• Leadership team mentoring
followed by whole
department customer focus
workshops - involving real
customers!
• Engaged ‘I-shaped’
personalities directly with
customer facing projects.
• Department retained.

17. Top Tip #3- Adopt & Adapt
• Process Manufacturing IT Service -
high autonomy, high budgetary
discretion
• Experimented with social
network-like platform (Yammer)
within IT.
• Engaged specific manufacturing
colleagues in ‘Ideation’ for new
processes.
• Platform and Ideation process now
adopted by EMEA business.

18. Top Tip #4- Drive
• University IT Team - federated
structure, poor project &
programme delivery on IT & Capital.
• Senior IT Team initiated a business
Benefits-led approach for all new
projects.
• Structured change programme -
IT & business colleagues together.
• Immediately improved delivery of
high investment projects. Raising
sector standards.

20. Table Talk
How will you
take a LEAD
on knowledge
worker
productivity?

21. References
• Microsoft:
www.thehybridorganisation.com
• Thinking for a Living http://
www.tomdavenport.com
• Knowledge Worker Productivity,
Peter Drucker 1999, California
Management Review
• Durham University Innovation Studio
http://www.dur.ac.uk/dbs/faculty/
projects/innovationstudio/

22. alison@leadandtransformit.com
Telephone: 0191 501 8550
Twitter: @leadtransformIT
www.leadandtransformit.com