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The key is identifying and addressing the barriers workers face in

their daily interactions.

Eric Matson and Laurence Prusak

Are you doing all that you can

to enhance the productivity o your

knowledge workers? Its a simple

question, but one that ew senior

executives can answer.

Their conusion isnt or lack o trying.

Organizations around the world

struggle to crack the code or improv-

ing the eectiveness o managers,

salespeople, scientists, and others

whose jobs consist primarily o

interactionswith other employees,

customers, and suppliersand

complex decision making based on

knowledge and judgment.1 The

stakes are high: raising the produc-

tivity o these workers, who con-

stitute a large and growing share o

the workorce in developed eco-

nomies, represents a major opportun-

ity or companies, as well as

or countries with low birthrates that

hope to maintain GDP growth.

Nonetheless, many executives

have a hazy understanding o what

it takes to bolster productivity

or knowledge workers. This lack o

clarity is partly because know-

ledge work involves more diverse

and amorphous tasks than do

production or clerical positions,

where the relatively clear-cut,

predictable activities make jobs

easier to automate or stream-

line. Likewise, perormance metrics

are hard to come by in knowledge

work, making it challenging to

manage improvement eorts (which

oten lack a clear owner in the

frst place). Against this backdrop,

its perhaps unsurprising that

many companies settle or scatter-

shot investments in training and

IT systems.

Since knowledge workers spend

hal their time on interactions, our

research and experience suggestthat companies should frst explore

the productivity barriers that

impede these interactions. Armed

with a better understanding o

the constraints, senior executives

can get more bang or their buck

by identiying targeted productivity-

improvement eorts to increase

both the efciency and eective-

ness o the interactions between

workers.

Among companies weve surveyed

(see sidebar, About the research),

Boosting the productivity oknowledge workers

Knowledge workers make

up more than 40 percent o theUS work orce.

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September 20102

ully hal o all interactions are con-

strained by one o fve barriers:physical, technical, social or cultural,

contextual, and temporal. While

individual companies will encounter

some obstacles more than others,

our experience suggests that the

approaches to overcoming them are

widely applicable.

Physical and technical

barriers

Physical barriers (including geo-

graphic distance and dierences in

time zones) oten go hand in hand

with technical barriers because the

lack o eective tools or locating

the right people and collaborating

becomes even more pronounced

when they are ar away. While thesebarriers are on the wane at many

companies given the arsenal o sot-

ware tools available, some large,

globally dispersed organizations

continue to suer rom them.

One remedy implemented by some

organizations is to create com-

munities o practice or people who

could beneft rom one anothers

adviceas the World Bank has doneto help the 100 or so o its plan-

ners who ocus on urban poverty to

acilitate discussions on projects

to upgrade slums. The communities

eature online tools to help geo-

graphically dispersed members

search or basic inormation (say,

member roles and the specifc

challenges they are addressing) and

sometimes use the latest social-

networking tools to provide more

sophisticated inormation, including

whom the members have worked

or trained with. By supplementing

electronic tools with videocon-

erences and occasional in-person

meetings, communities can

bridge physical distances and build

relationships.

Social or cultural barriers

Examples osocial or cultural

barriers include rigid hierarchy or

ineective incentives that dont

spur the right people to engage. To

avoid such problems, Petrobras,

the Brazil-based oil major, created a

series o case studies ocused

on real events in the companys past

that illuminate its values, proces-

ses, and norms. The cases are dis-

cussed with new hires in small

groupspromoting a better under-

standing o how the organization

works and encouraging a culture o

knowledge sharing and collabo-

rative problem solving. (To benefturther rom such approaches,

companies should include know-

ledge sharing in perormance

reviews and ensure that team leaders

clearly communicate acceptable

response times or inormation

requests. The communities o prac-

tice described above can help

too: employees are ar more likely to

give timely and useul responses

to people in their network.)

About the research

This article summarizes the results o a research

project under way since 2006. In the frst phase,

more than 200 knowledge workers at our

organizationsthe research institute Battelle,

Educational Testing Service (ETS), Novartis, and the

US Deense Intelligence Agencykept daily logs

o their knowledge interactions (more than 3,000

in total). Subsequently, we conducted feld research

and interviews with about 35 people at the original

our companies plus three new ones: Ecopetrol,

NASA, and Petrobras. For more on the frst phase o

research, see Al Jacobson and Laurence Prusak,

The cost o knowledge,Harvard Business Review,

November 2006.

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3Boosting the productivity o knowledge workers

Contextual barriers

Employees who ace contextual bar-

riers struggle to share and translate

knowledge obtained rom col-

leagues in dierent felds. Complex

interactions oten require contact

with people in other departments or

divisions, making it hard or workers

to assess a colleagues level o

expertise or apply the advice they

may receive. Think o the discon-

nect that oten occurs between a

companys sales department and

its product-development team over

customer data. The two groups

requently struggle to communicate

because they think and talk sodierently about the subject (sales

sta devote attention to customer

insights while developers ocus on

product specifcations).

To overcome contextual barriers,

organizations can rotate employees

across teams and divisions or

create orums where specialists in

dierent areas can learn about

one anothers work. The US National

Aeronautics and Space Adminis-

tration (NASA), or instance, holds a

biannual Masters Forum to share

knowledge across disciplines. About

50 employees rom dierent parts

o the agency attend the meetings to

hear other NASA colleagues talkabout the tools, methods, and skills

Ecopetrols technical forums

break down the natural barriers

between occupations and

promote knowledge sharing across

geographic boundaries.

OscarJavierGuerraPerdomo

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September 201044

they use in extremely complex

projects. The sessions are lightly

moderated and very interactive.

Similarly, managers at Ecopetrol, a

Colombian gas and oil company,

have ound that technical orums not

only break down the natural barriers

between occupations but also

acilitate knowledge sharing across

geographic boundaries. Moreover,

the orums build trust, which

encourages employees to share

inormation more reely.

The barrier of time

The fnal barrier is time, or rather the

perceived lack o it. I valuable

interactions are alling victim to time

constraints, executives can use

job roles and responsibilities to help

identiy the employees that know-

ledge workers should be interacting

with and on what topics. In some

cases, companies may need to

clariy decision rights and redefne

roles to reduce the interaction

burden on some employees whileincreasing it on others.

Boston-based Millennium Pharma-

ceuticals, which develops drugs

or cancer treatment, did just that.

When it ound that researchers

didnt have time to share lessons

rom their experiments, it created

a small group o scientists to act as

knowledge intermediaries.

Based on meetings with company

scientists as well as presenta-

tions, these employees summarize

fndings and submit them to

an internal database. They also act

as brokers by sharing know-

ledge across groups. The company

reckons that this practice, com-

bined with other initiatives, hasboosted success rates or the

companys research and reduced

the time needed to make key

decisions.

Eric Matson is a consultant in

McKinseys Boston ofce;

Laurence Prusak is the ounder

and director o the Institute or

Knowledge Management and a

ormer senior adviser to McKinsey.

Copyright 2010 McKinsey &

Company. All rights reserved.

For more on knowledge worker productivity, see

The next revolution in interactions andCompetitive advantage rom better interactions,

on mckinseyquarterly.com.

NASAs biannual Masters Forums,

attended by about 50 employees from

different parts of the agency, help

transfer knowledge across disciplines.

1For this article, we defne knowledge

interactions as those involving

only the knowledge in peoples heads,

not data or basic inormation that

can be downloaded through technology

alone.

Kerry Ellis/NASA