Knowledge work: Reports of its death an exaggeration
Grant Frear writes about the demise of the knowledge worker after reading Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind.
Pink says people in rich countries need to move away from left-brain (linear, organised) thinking towards more right-brain (or creative) thinking.
Frear’s first sentence says; “Well maybe not a complete demise but most certainly a geographic shift”. So we won’t accuse him of an exaggerated report of the death of knowledge work. The headline is an excuse to quote Mark Twain.
Geographic shift
Frear says work involving logical, repeatable left-brain tasks is better done by computer. Bosses can offload tasks which aren’t easily automated to Asia where there’s a cheaper workforce, hence the “geographic shift”.
It makes sense. Low value work has moved from Australia and New Zealand to Asia for at least a decade. How often have you rung telephone banking and spoken to someone with a strong Indian accent?
To make up for this geographic shift, Frear (or more accurately Frear quoting Pink) says people in richer countries need to work on their right-brain activities which are largely creative, non-linear and conceptual.
The problem he identifies is most rich-world employers favour left-brain thinking. They reward people based on these values and not on their creativity. All of this is true.
Knowledge work, left-brain right-brain
Frear (or maybe Pink) assumes knowledge work is a left-brain activity.
It can be, but is not always: writing is creative, but a form of knowledge work.
Also, while there are people who seem 100 percent left-brain or right-brain, in reality most show a healthy mix of both.
Rather than requiring a disorienting binary switch from one type of thinking to a totally different one, a smarter strategy might just be to steer one’s thinking more towards creativity.
If Frear and Pink are right, the good news is that in the future there will be less boring knowledge worker jobs in the richer world and more stimulating work.
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