“The knowledge worker does not produce something that is effective by itself. He does not produce a physical product–a ditch, a pair of shoes, a machine part. He produces knowledge, ideas, information. By themselves these “products” are useless. Somebody else, another man of knowledge, has to take them as his input and convert them into his output before they have any reality. The greatest wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaningless data. The knowledge worker, therefore, must do something which a manual worker need not do. He must provide effectiveness. He cannot depend on the utility his output carries with it as does a well-made pair of shoes.”
>> Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive
I re-read the first chapter of the Effective Executive this morning. Like everything Drucker wrote, the book is overflowing with insights. This passage caught my eye because it so thoughtfully captures one of the most common mistakes among knowledge workers, which is that they conflate activity with productivity. They focus on volume and how hard they and the team are working by counting the…
– number of new features
– number of events hosted
– number of social media posts
– number of presentations
– number of contracts negotiated
etc.
And let’s not forget the number of hours worked per day as the ultimate proxy for “hard work.”
Don’t get me wrong, each one of these items should absolutely be measured: they are controllable inputs. But metrics of gross volume are only valuable if and when they are coupled with measures of effectiveness related to cost, revenue, speed, or quality.
The reason is that effective output is what truly matters in the end. For example, would you rather launch 10 new features per year at $100,000 of incremental revenue per feature (more volume/activity) or 5 features per year at $1 million of incremental revenue per feature (more value)?
The lesson is simple but often overlooked – effectiveness is derived not from the volume of output but from making affirmative choices about what to do and what not to do.
Make sure that you have a proven, scalable, and repeatable process for making those decisions is what will lead to continuing success.
As Drucker states later in the chapter:
“Knowledge work is not defined by quantity. Neither is knowledge work defined by its costs. Knowledge work is defined by its results.”
