Is ‘knowledge work’ work?

I find that people are still troubled by the idea of ‘knowledge work’. They’re probably even more troubled by the rather narrower idea of ‘knowledge management work’.  Is knowledge management really ‘work’ or a distraction from work?

What I’m talking about here are those tasks that are required to make knowledge management work. Whether that is the organising, hosting, facilitation or moderation of virtual or ‘in the flesh’ knowledge exchange events, or the mustering, sorting, tagging and management of content. These seem, to some, to be peripheral activities. Not something you want to dedicate real resource, time and focus to.

So I was talking to a KM colleague in another organisation about this earlier today and it prompted me to write this entry. You see, I’m going to argue that this ‘knowledge management work’ is not only essential, and therefore something you really shouldn’t be looking to cut back on; but it is really value-creating.

The fact is, that if we stop doing these things, people will share knowledge and manage content.  But it will be sub-optimal, and to such an extent that opportunities will be lost, risk and waste will be greater and working life a bit more frustrating.

In today’s world of work so many of us spend so much time seeking, combining, and producing knowledge in all its forms, that we need a professional support system to oil the wheels. We can’t leave it to chance – that would be to go backwards.

The world of work is still coming to terms with the idea that the knowledge era has some different job roles needed in it to those we were used to in the industrial era. It’s still a big sticking point.