Knowledge Workers and Thinking

Knowledge workers are workers whose main capital is knowledge.

So if your main capital is money, you are a money worker? Maybe i dunno. 

Regardless, a knowledge worker essentially thinks for a living. From wikipedia, it seems like these are the type of people where you just give them a problem and they solve it. It is a very narrow field of work, yet spans across academically inclined careers like:

• Programmers
• Physicians
• Architects
• Engineers
• Scientists
• Design thinkers
• Lawyers
• Editors

So a pretty broad scope of opportunity for a job thats' focus becomes ever so narrow when they get there. 

Despite the ambiguity, these jobs are sometimes considered "gold collar" jobs. I left a link for descriptions of all collars in the sources section. Gold collar jobs are refers to highly-skilled knowledgeable people such as doctors, lawyers, and scientists. So, while it may seem out of place, knowledge work might still be in need of development. 

However, the need for knowledge management systems seem to be on the rise [source: me]. Its a pretty general statement but it is hard to deny when companies/software like Notion, RemNote, this note, that note, and Obsidian are becoming more and more popular. 

I worked at a software company that was using Confluence, which is like Notion but more business tailored, and yet still we had issues with just getting knowledge to new employees. 

• How to start up
• How to do this
• How to do that 

Very simple things that are easily said and easily done, but since we are on computers now, they have to be done certain ways and in certain steps. A person in knowledge management would see this as a problem and create something to circumvent it. Even though it seems small, it creates a bottleneck in work that can be fixed. 

So who would be a good fit for a potential knowledge worker role?

Knowledge workers must employ a combination of convergent and divergent thinking as part of their work

Someone who can bridge gaps between convergent and divergent thinking styles. 

 This is divergent thinking. You have an idea and blammo there are x number of scenarios that diverge from it. 

This is convergent thinking. Either answer could be correct, this is determined by x number of points converging into it. 

So, in case you have no passion for becoming anyone of: 

• Programmers
• Physicians
• Architects
• Engineers
• Scientists
• Design thinkers
• Lawyers
• Editors

Or you do, but maybe just something related and uncommon, thats okay. Had I known that knowledge management could become a legitimate profession, maybe id be less stressed about becoming a programmer. 

 

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_worker

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designation_of_workers_by_collar_color

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_thinking

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divergent_thinking