Long hours, endless streams of e-mail, blurry chains of command, occasional turf wars, and the ever-present foreboding that you'll never be able to meet all your obligations.
If this sounds like your life, there's a good chance you're a knowledge worker in a modern corporation. Try not to place all the blame on yourself. After all, a lot of these problems might be tied to how your organization is structured (Mandel et al., 2005). In fact, a number of experts believe that today's corporations tend to be in awkward transition between the traditional corporate structures of the 20th century and the ones necessary to thrive and be productive in the 21st century.
Analysts contend that contemporary organizations, which contain growing proportions of skilled workers, should not be structured in the same way as yesteryear's factories and plants. Knowledge workers depend, after all, on collaboration and the constant swapping back and forth of information, analysis, and expertise. 'There is a mass of evidence to suggest that, in the twenty-first century, the time is ripe for sustainable change in the ways organizations use to get things done,' states Gerard Fairtlough, former CEO of Shell Chemicals and author of The Three Ways of Getting Things Done (Donkin, 2005).
