Recession? It’s a knowledge worker crisis!

By Jerry Ash
Smart People magazine.

In a recent issue of the Journal of Professional Nursing, nurses were defined as knowledge workers and the role of knowledge became the central focus of a new recruitment policy for building a strong nursing workforce.

Google “recruiting+knowledge worker” and you will get 500,000 companies face a crisis and many don’t even know it. Knowledge savvy executives and managers are acutely aware of the threat to the company’s future viability. Those who haven’t embraced the idea of knowledge management worry just as much about all the expensive and laborious training they will have to spring for.

Smart people may be just as oblivious to the meaning of the knowledge factor in their own lives unless their professional journals, like the nursing journal, have defined their people as knowledge workers. And people in all professions really are knowledge workers.

Recruiters are now busy retraining themselves to broker this new kind of candidate – smart people. They not only see the growing demand for smart people; they see the shortage coming.

The clear-eyed see the shortage now. Yes now, when all the attention is on unemployment.

Whether you are one of the unemployed or the worried employed, now is the time for you to start looking at yourself as a knowledge worker. And build on it. The minute you begin thinking that way, the future looks very bright.

Sure, take inventory. What you know. What you think you know. What you don’t know. How you can contribute what you know for the company. For yourself.

But most importantly, take some of your spare time to learn how to be a knowledge worker. In the right work environment, knowledge working comes naturally, but unfortunately a majority of work environments aren’t knowledge work friendly. If you’re a Net Gener, you won’t like that.

Become self-educated about knowledge management – whether or not your goal is to be a knowledge manager. Truth is, almost all the information you find on “the knowledge thing” will be management oriented. No problem. Just do like Smart People magazine does – turn it inside out. Take the messages and revise them to your point of view – the knowledge worker.

Probably the best KM conference of the year is coming up in Houston, Texas May 11-15, at the Houstonian Hotel, Club & Spa. I’ll be there. It’s the product of the of APQC [www.apqc.org/kmconf09].

The theme is The Knowledge Transfer Revolution. Don’t worry about it being over your head. KM is not rocket science and the people who attend are ordinary smart people who work at different levels of KM. This is the 14th Annual Knowledge Management Conference and Training event. I attended the first and several since. I always come away bristling with new ideas and new energy. And I’m sure this year, I’ll find some management stories I can turn inside out!