Knowledge work is difficult to turn into a process

In my previous post I described the difficulty of modelling most knowledge work as a process, and that makes it difficult to create IT tools to support it, to measure it, improve it and ultimately automate it.  Rod Boothby follows a similar train of thought in his post Forget Robots – and it isn’t an assembly line.  I agree completely with Rob that the focus is not on process, it should be on practice, ie what people are doing, what they are trying to achieve,  we can then share with them examples of good practice, tools, techniques, templates etc that they can utilise to make their time more effective.  We may not be able to create a process for what they do, but we can definitely help!

Btw:  If you don’t subscribe to Rod’s blog Innovation Creators – do it now – here’s the RSS feed,  it really is one of the best resources for anyone trying to improve the lot for information workers.