Friday 16 June 2017

How to make the shift from knowledge work to meaningful work

There's a lot to love about this working class manifesto.

Meaning no disrespect to the author I would replace the word knowledge with human or meaningful.

I believe we've moved on from knowledge work.

Knowledge might have meant power once. Today trust is power.

Today the most remarkable work is human work. And the key to human work is that it's meaningful.

The author of the manifesto Esko Kilpi nails this himself when he says the following:

Post-industrial business is about doing meaningful things 
with meaningful people 
in a meaningful way.

Machines will soon do most of the algorithmic work, the simple, routine, and repetitive. In the process at least half of the jobs available today will be gone in a decade or less.


The exciting news is that this means human work is increasing in value. The artisan is back. Human work is creative, collaborative, and meaningful.

Human work can also be rare as well as valuable and meaningful as Cal Newport beautifully describes in his wonderful book 'Deep Work'.

One of the key reasons I believe we have past the era of knowledge work and knowledge workers is because knowledge is now accessible via the internet.

Of course knowing doesn't mean wisdom and as Stephen Covey once observed "To know and not to do is really not to know."

How to make the shift from knowledge work to meaningful work

We can all do work that is meaningful to us. A key question to ask is: How can work that is meaningful to us be meaningful and valuable (and rare) for others?

Action

Make a list of all the people you have working relationships with and over time converse with each person to discover how the value you deliver to them can be more valuable, meaningful, and rare to them. Then deliver such value.

Be remarkable.
Ian

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