We’re living in the knowledge age. If you doubt that statement at all, read what Manpower Inc. has to say: “The amount of technical information is doubling every two years. By 2010, it’s predicted to double every 72 hours. This year more new information will be generated than in the previous 5,000 years.”
Add to this over abundance of information the economic pressures brought to bear on business and we have the perfect storm of leaner, meaner, just-in-time workplaces requiring extreme mental agility.
What is the new skill set – the one that will differentiate business athletes from the rest of the pack? It is the ability to recognize and make use of essential bits of data from a never-ending stream of information coupled with rapid task switching. I might have inserted the word ‘multitasking’ but I think that is a misnomer. We can’t really complete multiple tasks simultaneously. Remember the last time you were on the phone with someone and you could tell they had begun reading email because their comments shifted from engaged to barely present?
The knowledge age creates new challenges for leaders. How do we measure productivity in knowledge workers? How do we ensure our important messages make it through the endless stream of data and are acted upon? How do we keep people engaged in learning when their brains are overloaded with torrents of information?
Additional concerns come from the method of information transfer. Much of today’s information is delivered via the written word: email messages, online tutorials, corporate intranets, written policy documents, etc. Workers whose learning preference is auditory or kinesthetic will not take readily to these delivery methods and may even require some form of accommodation.
Today’s leader must excel at rapid learning and develop systems to capture and retrieve increasingly large amounts of data. We need to deliver information to our teams using multiple channels to maximize the return on communications. And we need to help others learn these skills so that we are developing strength and succession within our organizations.
Filed under: leadership, productivity | Tagged: brand management, information overload, knowledge age, knowledge worker, leadership, learning, Manpower Inc., multitasking, next generation, Vision, workplace expectations
