Knowledge specialty

Middle of Feb 2016 → I’m going to edit this page soon. In the meantime look here

“To know something,
to really understand something important,
one must look at it from sixteen different angles.

People are perceptually slow,
and there is no shortcut to understanding;
it takes a great deal of time.” read more

You won’t get a knowledge specialty in school.
You may get a start toward one.

… “It will force us to accept the fact that,
in the knowledge society, learning is life-long
and does not end with graduation.

In fact, that is when it begins.” DOA

What knowledge specialties are involved in
conceiving, designing, producing, distributing,
improving … a smart phone?

What part of this could be done by a generalist?

Dense reading and Dense listening and Thinking broad and Thinking detailed

What about each of the images above?
What were the knowledge specialties back then?

What’s happening over time?

Knowledge specialties are embedded in the …

Economic content & structure, money flows, efforts, and consumer lives

and other places & types of organizations

What are the knowledge specialties that [will] matter?

Knowledge exists only in application

click the image below

Application on the road ahead

It is the very nature of knowledge
that it changes fast and
that today’s certainties
will be tomorrow’s absurdities. — Peter Drucker

The primacy of knowledge

Economic stagnation and severe social tension from
failure to raise knowledge and service worker productivity

Knowledges by themselves are sterile. They become productive only if welded together into a single, unified knowledge. To make this possible is the task of organization, the reason for its existence, its function.

They’re Not Employees, They’re People

The knowledge worker, to repeat, differs from any earlier worker in two major aspects.

First, the knowledge worker owns the means of production and they are portable (to where? — bobembry).

Second, he or she is likely to outlive any employing organization.

Add to this that knowledge work is very different in character from earlier forms of work.

It is effective only if highly specialized.

What makes a brain surgeon effective is that he is a specialist in brain surgery.

By the same token, however, he probably could not repair a damaged knee.

And he certainly would be helpless if confronted with a tropical parasite in the blood.

This is true for all knowledge work.

“Generalists”—and this is what the traditional business enterprise, including the Japanese companies, tried to develop—are of limited use in a knowledge economy.

In fact, they are productive only if they themselves become specialists in managing knowledge and knowledge workers.

This, however, also means that knowledge workers, no matter how much we talk about “loyalty,” will increasingly and of necessity see their knowledge area—that is, their specialization rather than the employing organization—as what identifies and characterizes them.

Their community will increasingly be people who share the same highly specialized knowledge, no matter where they work or for whom.

Read more

The kind of work you want to do, will determine the kind of networks you need to be involved with — your specialty or overlapping.

The Learning Society is Taking Over

Tomorrow's leader

Find: “Is Knowledge And Access To Knowledge
Built Into Your Way Of Doing Business?”
in The Definitive Drucker.
You might also try a page search for “translat” and the “isolated”

This means a radical change in structure for the organizations of tomorrow.

It means that the big business, the government agency, the large hospital, the large university will not necessarily be the one that employs a great many people.

It will be the one that has substantial revenues and substantial results—achieved in large part because it itself does only work that is focused on its mission; work that is directly related to its results; work that it recognizes, values, and rewards appropriately.

The rest it contracts out.

The function of organizations is to make knowledges productive.

Organizations have become central to society in all developed countries because of the shift from knowledge to knowledges.

The more specialized knowledges are, the more effective they will be.

… “For the major new insights in every one of the specialized knowledges arise out of another, separate specialty, out of another one of the knowledges.

Both economics and meteorology are being transformed at present by the new mathematics of chaos theory. Geology is being profoundly changed by the physics of matter; archaeology, by the genetics of DNA typing; history, by psychological, statistical, and technological analyses and techniques.” Chapter 48, Management, Revised Edition

… But now the traditional axiom that an enterprise should aim for maximum integration has become almost entirely invalidated.

One reason is that the knowledge needed for any activity has become highly specialized.

… snip, snip …

It is therefore increasingly expensive, and also increasingly difficult, to maintain enough critical mass for every major task within an enterprise.

And because knowledge rapidly deteriorates unless it is used constantly, maintaining within an organization an activity that is used only intermittently guarantees incompetence.

The second reason why maximum integration is no longer needed is that communications costs have come down so fast as to become insignificant.

… snip, snip …

This has meant that the most productive and most profitable way to organize is to disintegrate.

This is being extended to more and more activities.

Chapter 6 Management, Revised Edition

Information gathering and decision thinking

For this to be really useful, you’ll have to harvest interesting ideas and figure out how to implement them across time and within time. There is more on this process further down the page — here

We can only work on, with and toward the “things”
on our active “mental radar.”

Larger view of image above. Thought collector and idea mapping

Calendarization (working something out in time)

The actual results of action are not predictable

Larger view of image above

Organization actions: creating change to abandonment

Henry Jones Grail Diary —
his thinking canvases and notes

Larger view of the image below.

Concepts to daily action

Connecting

Questions ::: Thinking canvases

Thinking canvases can be used for mapping
limited areas or for everything here

Connecting the dots

Thought generator and a way to map ideas

An important tool for getting from concepts to daily action

Exploration

Learning and education

Work life brainscape

About knowledge

Production (very important)

Managing Oneself

Continuing education → (site search)

Early Career Work ← needs major re-work

Career work plan development ← needs major re-work

Guidance from Peter Drucker ← need major re-work

Chapters 3 - 10 in Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Big picture thinking landscape

Use the Google site search box below to locate more info

List of topics in this Folder

“The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not turbulence; it is to act with yesterday’s logic”. — Peter Drucker

The shift from manual workers who do as they are being told — either by the task or by the boss — to knowledge workers who have to manage themselves ↓ profoundly challenges social structure …

“Managing Oneself is a REVOLUTION in human affairs.” … “It also requires an almost 180-degree change in the knowledge workers’ thoughts and actions from what most of us—even of the younger generation—still take for granted as the way to think and the way to act.” …

… “Managing Oneself is based on the very opposite realities: Workers are likely to outlive organizations (and therefore, employers can’t be depended on for designing your life), and the knowledge worker has mobility.” ← in a context

These pages are attention directing tools for navigating a world moving toward unimagined futures.

It’s up to you to figure out what to harvest and calendarize
— working something out in time (1915, 1940, 1970 … 2040 … the outer limit of your concern) — nobody is going to do it for you.

It may be a step forward to actively reject something (rather than just passively ignoring) and then figure out a coping plan for what you’ve rejected.

Your future is between your ears and our future is between our collective ears — it can’t be otherwise. A site exploration starting point

What needs doing?

Donations: Please click the button below to make a donation through PayPal.

Other forms of PayPal payment besides donations

Why donate?

Copyright 2001 2005 2007 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 © All rights reserved | bobembry | bob embry | “time life navigation” ^© | “life TIME investment system” ^© | “career evolution” ^© | “life design” ^© | “organization evolution” ^© | “brainroads toward tomorrows” ^© | “foundations for future directed decisions” ^© | #rlaexpdotcom ^© | rlaexpdomcom ^©

rlaexp.com = real life adventures + exploration

#rlaexpdotcom introduction breadcrumb trail …