Tacit Learning = Informal Learning

December 31st, 2005 | need

McKinsey Quarterly has an interesting free (but you need to register) article entitled The next revolution in interactions.

The gist is that discretionary knowledge work is growing like topsy, and transactional knowledge work is in decline. Routine transactional jobs have been automated or outsourced or re-engineered out of existence. The more complex jobs (McKinsey calls this tacit work) involve interacting with other people, problem-solving, and things that are difficult to reduce to a routine. The complex jobs are higher up the food chain: they pay more and they have more impact on organizational performance.

According to McKinsey,

70 percent of all US jobs created since 1998�4.5 million, or roughly the combined US workforce of the 56 largest public companies by market capitalization�require judgment and experience. These jobs now make up 41 percent of the labor market in the United States (Exhibit 1). Indeed, most developed nations are experiencing this trend.

McKinsey says the shift from routine to tacit work “upends everything we know about organizations.” Geez. Guess we better call in some high-priced consultants to help us figure this one out, eh?

But the rise of the tacit workforce and the decline of the transformational and transactional ones demand new thinking about the organizational structures that could help companies make the best use of this shifting blend of talent. There is no road map to show them how to do so.

McKinsey offers three suggestions.

Funnel routine stuff away from tacit workers.
Performance support and workflow learning
Web 2.0 and collaboration software

It warms my heart to see that McKinsey and I agreeing on this although I describe it in simpler language. What they call tacit work, I’ve been calling improv and what they call an unclear path is what I’ve been describing as informal learning. My summary would be that while you may get away with treating transactional workers as if they were machines, you’ve got to treat discretionary knowledge workers as fellow human beings.

I don’t want confusion to arise between informal learning (the subject) and my take on informal learning (my opinions). That being the case, I intend to mark my stuff with the logo informL. InformL.com will soon be the URL here.

2 comments ↓

#1 Harold Jarche on 01.01.06 at 5:08 am

Sounds like McKinsey & Co have taken Dan Pink’s latest book, mixed it with Thomas Friedman’s and added some stats to create their new brand of consulting for 2006. Gee, wish I could do that and get some new consulting gigs too
(BTW, congratulations on finishing your book)

#2 Peter Isackson on 01.04.06 at 5:27 am

Jay,
I love the cultural implications of “unclear path”. McKinsey can’t promote something without marking it with negative pheromones. They’re speaking from a culture where clear = good and unclear = bad. (Not all cultures align on those values).

They’re right, of course, to point out the unpredictability of this, particularly given the structural nature of resistance. Believe me, it runs deep, precisely because it’s so profoundly cultural, going well beyond people’s logical choices, well beyond even freakonomic choices where awareness of interest is critical. The question is when will the threshold of awareness finally be crossed so that decision-makers can act with their usual illogical (or pseudo-logical) style but for once in their actual self-interest.

At least McKinsey & co have given their imprimatur to some of the key ideas. And their suggestions 2 and 3 have an absolutely delicious taste.