Over 1 billion knowledge workers comprise today’s global business landscape. Knowledge workers are basically individuals whose job is to “think for a living”. They make up a vast array of professions across industries, such as computer professionals, physicians, pharmacists, architects, engineers, scientists, design thinkers, public accountants, lawyers, editors, and academics.
On a daily basis, knowledge workers are either creating or communicating (sometimes both). The medium for creation is typically some type of IT system, such as Office Suite, CRM, ERP, Drawing, Web and others. The medium through which communication happens can be varied, but often includes email, video/phone calls, and chat.
All this activity can be abstracted into three major components:
- Tasks – creation or communication done by one person
- Huddles – an unscheduled call/meeting usually with two or three people
- Meetings – a scheduled call.
The purposes for communication and creation fall into three categories:
- Responding to ad-hoc requests from colleagues and clients (internal or external) - A request is simply an added “to-do”. A low-level task that does not arise to the level of a full-fledged project. Typically, a request is something that can take a few minutes, or even a few weeks to complete. Examples include:
- Preparing a sales contract (legal)
- Generating an a/r aging report for a particular client (finance)
- Showing a custom demo to a prospect
- Moving money from account A to account B (banking)
- Work on projects, opportunities, and matters - All organizations have projects, but they are called different things based on the department or industry. For example, someone in sales might use the term “opportunity”, whereas legal teams may say “matter”. A project typically lasts from months to years and is generally already managed in existing enterprise systems. Due to the nature of knowledge work, the project system captures the high-level phases or milestones, not the detailed activity. The reason is simple. The creative process of knowledge work typically means breaking down a phase into actual daily tasks – this is difficult from a planning perspective.
- Everyday work – repetitive work/processes that are done on a regular basis throughout the month. These are typically things like:
- Month-end close for finance
- Expense reports
- Time entry
- Cleaning up CRM data
Each knowledge worker needs to plan and execute the tasks, huddles and meetings that they are met with on a daily basis.
Belt is here to help!
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