What Is a Knowledge Worker? A knowledge worker is someone whose job entails having really interesting conversations

We live in a world where more of us work with knowledge than with things. But we rarely ask what it means to be a knowledge worker. It’s not just about information or tools. It’s about how we think, how we act, and how we take responsibility for our own work.

Peter Drucker introduced the term “Knowledge Worker” in his book Landmarks of Tomorrow in 1959. But what is a Knowledge Worker? Here is Druker’s definition:

Every knowledge worker in modern organization is an "executive" if, by virtue of his position or knowledge, he is responsible for a contribution that materially affects the capacity of the organization to perform and to obtain results.

Credit: Peter Drucker

And here is a shorter, pithier one that I like from Tom Stewart

A Knowledge Worker is someone who gets to decide what he or she does each morning.

Credit: Tom Stewart

But this one from David Weinberger in the Cluetrain Manifesto says it all for me.

Here's a definition of that pesky and borderline elitist phrase, 'knowledge worker'.

A knowledge worker is someone whose job entails having really interesting conversations at work.

The characteristics of conversations map to the conditions for genuine knowledge generation and sharing: they're unpredictable interactions among people speaking in their own voice about something they're interested in.

The conversants implicitly acknowledge that they don't have all the answers (or else the conversation is really a lecture) and risk being wrong in front of someone else.

And conversations overcome the class structure of business, suspending the organization chart at least for a little while.

If you think about the aim of Knowledge Management as enabling better conversations rather than lassoing stray knowledge doggies, you end up focusing on breaking down the physical and class barriers to conversation.

And if that's not what Knowledge Management is really about, then you ought to be doing it anyway.

Credit: David Weinberger

And then, I have my own definition.

Knowledge workers are those people who have taken responsibility for their work lives.

They continually strive to understand the world about them and modify their work practices and behaviors to better meet their personal and organizational objectives.

No one tells them what to do. They do not take No for an answer. They are self motivated.

Credit: David Gurteen

It’s an interesting question. What do you think are the core attributes of a knowledge worker?