Post in Progress!
I was going to start this post with “I’m starting to think the supremacy of the knowledge worker in business is being eclipsed by the relationship worker“. However as I started to write the post I realized it may not be big news!
The amount of knowledge work, the number of knowledge workers, and the rewards for knowledge work have increased substantial over the last three or four decades. It’s been a good ride for the knowledge worker and will probably continue to be for decades to come. The contribution of knowledge work in value creation is significant. However, more and more we are seeing what we think is a new kid on the block – the Relationship Worker and generating new levels of value through effectively managing and using social capital.
It may not be that the relationship worker is new, but rather just few in number. The successful people in business were usually the ones that were strong in relationships with knowledge workers and had the ability to make things happen. Perhaps we could also say to be a good knowledge worker you needed to be a reasonable good relationship worker. Quality knowledge products and outputs requires a good level of sharing and feedback. So there is a relationship worker within every knowledge worker.
It may be that the times and current challenges have created a need for many more people to come forward and shine as relationship worker. Success for almost everything in business is requiring building high quality connections with all types of enterprise stakeholders (clients, employees, suppliers/partners, competitors, community, owners/investors, all levels of government, and even the planet).
<< More to come soon!>>
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