[ Autonomy ]

The knowledge work economy emerged in the 1950s, after we’d perfected the industrialised factory approach to making things. Now that machines and production lines were starting to produce many of our goods, there needed to be a cohort of people managing that… and improving it.

But there was no structure attached to those roles. Over the next 50 years, chaotic workflow has emerged, now mostly driven by emails.

Knowledge workers are expected to ‘just know’ what to do next. And we often have – and want - the autonomy to figure out what’s next. This makes for haphazard approaches, for everyone.