All knowledge workers have an implicit psychological contract with their employer, colleagues, and customers. The contract is about unspoken expectations and values. It is often not well understood, but it is one of the foundations of organisational effectiveness because it is a trust or distrust transaction. Breach of these expectations rapidly results in disillusionment, dissatisfaction, and ultimately permanent disengagement.

Knowledge workers are educated thinking people. They expect their efforts to be acknowledged and rewarded appropriately. They expect some variety in their work, as well as a degree of autonomy. They expect the loyalty they show to be reciprocated and to be treated with respect. They expect task assignment to be realistic. A lot of this comes down to perception management.

There is clear evidence in the management literature that the implicit psychological contract is breached when knowledge workers perceive that others have broken promises, or failed to deliver on commitments, or have completely unrealistic work output expectations. Why then do so many senior managers, who are knowledge workers themselves and also have implicit psychological contracts, set unrealistic goals and tasks?

The knowledge productivity target offers some clues. I have introduced the knowledge productivity target previously so I won’t describe it in detail; however it is worth looking at the illustration again.

I think the problem arises because so much work today resides in the urgent dimension, or at least is perceived to reside in this part. So many of the tasks we get these days are perceived to be important, difficult and urgent. But why are they are urgent, and why are they difficult?

More often than not the urgency dimension makes an otherwise relatively easy task difficult. Our instant gratification and communication society imposes urgency, but so often this is not necessary, and quite often it is not the senior manager’s or other knowledge workers intent.

When I was in the Army we had a saying for unnecessary urgency; the saying was (is) “Hurry up and wait!” The saying was most often used when we had to be somewhere hours before the real time we had to be there. For example, a senior officer would say "Be at the airport at 10 o’clock", but by the time orders were issued to the private soldier, and everyone had added their fudge factor, the requirement was "Be at the airport at 4 o’clock", which was never the senior officer’s intent. I think we do a lot of “hurry up and wait” in our knowledge work, and I think it negatively colours our implicit psychological contract. It also degrades the quality of the outcome, and is so doing the satisfaction for all parties. This leads to the path of disillusionment, dissatisfaction, and disengagement, and a breach of the implicit psychological contract.

I’ve said it before – time matters to knowledge workers! Perhaps it matters more than we think?

Regards Graham