Stop the clock

Has clock-watching – by employers as well as staff – become a barrier to KM?

By Jerry Ash

The MindTree environment is a KMers’ dream. Isn’t it? (See ‘Ideas Emerging’ in this issue, page 22). A knowledge management (KM) champion’s mind is surely supercharged by the wonder of MindTree’s incredible fruit – emergence. Yet, you must ask, how could such a practice be replicated in the US or Europe?

Notwithstanding the company’s extraordinary system of knowledge-sharing and empowerment, it is interesting that its communities initially had somewhat the same trouble as everyone else trying to recruit the right minds to the ‘task table’ when it meant extra work, often off the clock.

With more than 3,000 employees in offices located around the world and with the use of open-source social networks and systems, MindTree has been successful in finding enough volunteers who are passionate enough about various tasks to give that extra effort.

But the clock is a foe many times greater than that faced by MindTree.

Power of the clock

Is passion the easy answer? Not always. The adversarial relationship between labour, management and, increasingly, government regulators, embedded during the industrial age leaves us with a legacy of mistrust on both sides of the equation and with laws that were certainly right-minded during the era of sweat shops, but are wrong-minded in the era of knowledge work.

The clock remains the instrument of power of both labour and management – labour using it to limit working weeks, while management uses it to ensure that employees put in ‘a full day’s work.’ This scenario reinforces the industrial-era ‘them and us’ mindset that is unsuitable for a mordern, open and collaborative business and working environment.

How many exceptional but pragmatic minds pass up a special opportunity when they still think they are just putting in the required time or they are simply not passionate enough or team-spirited enough to volunteer their time without guaranteed extra pay? If the answer is “only one,” that may still be one too many if he or she turns out to have the unique, key knowledge that could make all the difference to the success or failure of an organisation in today’s highly competitive environment.

Why not stop the clock? Does the time clock make any sense in a knowledge-networked world?

In countries regarded as KM leaders, such as Australia, Canada, the UK and the US, it may be because it is against the full might of the law. In the US, the Fair Labour Standards Act requires that most employees be paid at least the federal minimum wage for all hours worked and overtime paid at time and one-half the regular rate of pay for all hours worked over 40 hours in a working week. European labour laws are similar to the US where labour unions are also more powerful and fairly diligent in ensuring that these laws are enforced.

Luke Naismith, a director of Knowledge Futures Consulting and corporate strategy manager for the Victorian Government Department of Justice in Australia, says that labour unions are amenable to ‘flexi-time’, but largely within the limits of the clock.

Naismith agrees that the clock and knowledge management simply do not mix. “Knowledge work often doesn’t happen at work,” he says. “I can have a brainwave and think of a fabulous new design while in the shower or traveling to work before ‘clocking on’. Knowledge workers take their work home with them – it’s hard to leave the brain at the office door!”

Companies under restrictive labour laws have always used salary for people who are paid to think, such as executives, managers and many categories of professionals. To ensure that they do not fall foul of labour laws, companies in the US often have far more managers than they actually need.

There are other ways, too. ‘Assistant’ managers are often given a management title just to get around the 40-hour limit set in stone in US law. The tactic is also a source of abuse when hourly workers are converted to salary for no apparent reason than to get more work out of them without giving them any extra pay. It has become an issue – a bone of contention – among many workers and also harmful to the work environment KMers want to develop. In some ways, too, it arguably provides a significant barrier to advancement from the shop floor.

In most companies, however, inflated management numbers still represent a minority of employees. And so, only a minority of employees are eligible to engage in knowledge work off the clock. That isn’t the case with MindTree or many other consulting companies where most of the labour force is composed of exempt professionals.

But for most organisations, the constantly ticking clock shuts out or limits the vast majority of employees from the full scope of mind work.

If we are truly partnering with all our employees, shouldn’t we stop compensating on the basis of time served and start compensating on the basis of work accomplished? Shouldn’t we try to educate labour and lobby national governments to get an exemption for knowledge workers? In the US, even migrant farm workers are exempt (which hardly makes the law fair). But if a lobbyist was successful in making the case for seasonally employed fruit pickers to be exempted, why not for KM as well?

Untold story

A reporter usually knows more than he or she can possibly cram within the limits of just a few magazine pages. But here is a significant human-interest story that is still waiting to be told from my many pages of notes on ‘Emergence’ (page 22) at MindTree.

Although an Indian company, MindTree was developed and grew partially in the US to work around Indian culture that is contrary to the flat social-structure of an open-source company. Traditionally, for example, chairman and managing director Ashok Soota would be called “Mr. Soota” or “Sir.” However, at MindTree he wants everyone to be regarded as equal and wants all ‘MindTree minds’ to be called by their first names – including Ashok.

To reinforce the fundamentals behind this continuing cultural change, there are no stuffy offices and no rigid hierarchies at MindTree. Regular ‘AllMinds Meet’ gatherings are held to bring people together to socialise, receive reports from senior management, ask questions and to provide a forum in which everyone can speak up. Other than the four most senior people, everyone works in a cube so that they are always easily seen and also easy to approach.

A long way from the caste system that is more often associated with India, even today, wouldn’t you say?

Jerry Ash is a KM coach, founder of the Association of Knowledgework, http://www.kwork.org, and special correspondent to Inside Knowledge. He is the author of the Ark Group’s latest major report, Next Generation Knowledge Management. To order, contact Adam Scrimshire at publishing@marketing.ark-group.com. Jerry Ash can be reached at jash@kwork.org.