Comments on: Burstworking discussion storm

By: Stephen Collins

Stephen Collins — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 20:13:38 +0000

@James – my intent is not at all to be patronising of Anne. Indeed, she and I have been emailing privately about my initial post and she doesn’t seem bothered.
My use of “intellectual” and “whole new level” are used in a pure sense. Matthew’s response, which I didn’t entirely agree with (I love what Anne has written), has moved the conversation literally into the academic space by opening with Drucker’s definition of a knowledge economy and in that framework, discussing the need for appropriate management response to knowledge worker needs. This, BTW is right up his alley; he’s an organisational psychologist who works for a major Australian management consultancy giving (at times) just this sort of high-level advice.
Anne’s post, on the other hand, is a real-world, practical look at the nature of burst work and how it differs from burst work in actual manifestation. No theoretical, academic discussion here, just real, practical advice.

By: James Governor

James Governor — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 13:38:14 +0000

the phrase “significantly more intellectual” could easily be taken as being patronising. taking the conversation to “a whole new level”. wtf? Anne has started a great conversation, with lots of threads and her framework works rather well so far imho.

By: Euan Semple on social computing at acidlabs

Euan Semple on social computing at acidlabs — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 12:14:41 +0000

[...] to my recent posts on burst working as well as my past Enterprise 2.0 posts, UK-based social computing and Enterprise [...]

By: What does Web 2.0 owe Peter Drucker? at Facibus Reviews

What does Web 2.0 owe Peter Drucker? at Facibus Reviews — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 01:38:05 +0000

[...] Steve Collins is not sure who Peter Drucker was. [...]

By: KM 2.0? « Matt’s Musings

KM 2.0? « Matt’s Musings — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 00:19:25 +0000

[...] some research to support my argument in a comment I made on a recent blog post by Stephen, “Burstworking storm discussion“, when I stumbled across an article by Allen Bonde on The (New) Age of Knowledge Management. [...]

By: Magia3e

Magia3e — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 23:51:33 +0000

What can I say, Drucker is cool

I’d like to see a greater awareness by managers, particularly in government, that the old-economy way of dealing with staff, hierarchies, fixed working hours, and a specific rate of flow of paper, just won’t get anyone ahead in this emerging 21st century information age.

We all need to be more flexible in the way we work and that means more flexible everything, including technology support. We need ways of working flexibly and sharing knowledge flexibly.

Do the so called web-workers though need more support than others? Are web-workers more enlightened than others? Are they all burst rather than busy? Probably not. I would even go so far as to say that the notion of a web-worker is more a product of the in-group vs. the out-group, in the same way that “I’m more cool than you” or “I’m more creative than you” or even the “I’m Mac and you’re Windows”.

Rather than fight the busy v. burst war let’s just all work toward helping old-school managers realise that their way just won’t work in this New Age (just as Stephen rightly points out here).

.. and of course I’m sometimes wrong!