Despite AI, Knowledge Workers Have Cause for Optimism

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Technology has long had an impact on blue-collar workers, automating many manufacturing jobs. Now, with the advent of ChatGPT and generative AI, knowledge workers are anxious about the future of their careers.

What’s needed could be flipping the script: countering the anxiety by realizing the advantages 21^st century knowledge workers have and mustering the confidence to continue building a career as the world changes.

And there is no better guide than Peter Drucker, the man who devised the concept of knowledge workers in the late 1950s, when they were few and far between. Thirty years ago, in an invited lecture at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, he laid some of the groundwork for the now-needed shift in thinking. Unlike the typical worker of the early 20^th century, he said, knowledge workers could advance in their careers by paying attention to “mobility, horizon, and self-confidence.” Despite all the changes in the world since 1994, the same elements still command attention.

Context and Historical Perspective

In his remarks, Drucker placed knowledge and knowledge work in context and historical perspective. When Drucker delivered his lecture, we were on the cusp of a new era in communication and computerization: The web was in its earliest stages, and it was four years before the creation of Google. It was a full decade before Facebook went online, and social media didn’t take off seriously until several years after that. It was long before streaming, mobile phones were not yet in wide use, and smartphones were more than a decade away. It was also long before financial technological innovations such as bitcoin and the blockchain.

Yet, Drucker emphasized, change had long been the norm. He pointed out that early in the 20th century, the labor force was dominated by people working on farms and undergoing a boom in manufacturing employment—which didn’t last forever and, in its decline, is still echoing through today’s society.

Employing the Advantages

Mobility. Unlike other workers, knowledge workers own their own means of production, which, Drucker observed, is located “between their ears”—in other words, what they know and have the ability to learn. Then as now, they are not tied to any one employer or type of work. Such mobility, coupled with portability (many knowledge workers are not reliant on equipment operated by their employer) provides unprecedented options.

Knowledge workers can collaborate with people they may never meet in person, anywhere in the world—an advantage that accelerated during the pandemic, with increased work from home and hybrid work. And it is knowledge work itself that provided the technological advances to make such options possible and viable. When knowledge is portable, we can work from anywhere—home, a coffee shop, co-working space, library, or office.

Horizon. The many advantages of knowledge workers could widen their horizons, leading to brighter futures. Their many different possibilities for work and learning are cause for increased optimism—knowledge workers have the ability to see beyond their current circumstances and recognize valuable opportunities. In his book Managing the Non-Profit Organization, published four years before his Harvard lecture, Drucker wrote that “self-development becomes self-renewal when you walk a different path, become aware of a different horizon, move toward a different destination.”

The same applies to thinking in broader time spans, well into the future. Thinking long-term has implications for how to approach work and career development in the first place; it can mean exercising patience in making decisions by thinking beyond today, while not neglecting current circumstances and challenges.

Self-confidence. Knowledge workers can develop a sense of confidence in performing their work, continually improving and learning, while cultivating relationships with others that can advance careers and making meaningful contributions to society. People who are confident that their talents are needed and in demand have access to a wide variety of potential employers and/or partners and collaborators. They have cause to remain open-minded and seize new opportunities.

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Conclusion

It is difficult to imagine what changes might arrive that will further impact how we live and work. Yet Drucker’s directive to focus on the advantages of mobility, horizon, and self-confidence has held up well for the past 30 years. Those features are optimistic, forward-looking, and positive, and can provide a valuable way of thinking, working, and living in the next 30 years.