Redefining the Knowledge Worker

I know little of fish, apart from my love of consuming it. The handful of restaurants I frequent do a masterful job of supplanting my ignorance with fresh preparations, and I maintain a general trust that they know what they’re doing. Until, as occasionally happens, I am let down.

Let us suppose, though, that I was compelled to begin preparing fish at home (which I am not). Hierarchically, my need for knowledge might look something like this:

1. What fish is easy for me to prepare, in a simple kitchen, with relatively little specialty cookware?
2. What are the techniques I would use to cook the fish?
3. What fish is ‘in season’, and will deliver the best result against my existing skillset and means?
and possibly: 4. What fish is a good price at the moment, so as to maximize my spending?

These four, ostensibly straightforward, but actually quite complex questions require not only a generalized knowledge of fish, but also an ability to operate outside of oneself, if a meaningful answer is to be given. Hierarchically, again, the sources I might look to in order to glean the answers to these questions:

1. A close friend known to be an experienced cook
2. A specialty seafood vendor / fishmonger
3. Online resources for chefs and cooks
4. The seafood department at a high end grocery chain (i.e. Whole Foods)
5. A seafood cookbook, regional in nature
6. The seafood department at my local grocery store

Certainly, as the desire for knowledge grows more specialized and uniquely personalized in nature, the sources we seek to satisfy the needs become correspondingly more localized and personal. Consider the varying sources from which you might procure musical products and/or knowledge:

1. A trusted friend: you know what I like, what I don’t, and I’m in need of something new to listen to…
2. Local speciality music store: I have developed a specific interest in XXX. Do you have something else of a similar nature?
3. Music magazine or website: What is new, noteworthy, and roughly fits into a genre I already know that I enjoy?
3. Local / regional independent chain: What is the breadth of new releases and backcatalogue available to me across a range of genres?
4. Big box retailer: I know what I am after, trust that you will have it in stock, and will get the best price

In this model, the expectations for personalized service and insight decrease in a manner that directly correlates to the expected specific knowledge ascribed to the provider of that insight (unless, of course, I am asking a friend with little or no knowledge of music for recommendations, in which case I am bound to fail).

All of which brings us back to the notion of a knowledge worker, famously used by Peter Drucker (among many others) to describe professionals (primarily of a white collar nature) whose work demanded of them thought and insight, in contrast to laborers. In a retail environment, though, increasingly dependent on the ability to match consumers with a long tail of products and services, retail employees are arguably knowledge workers to a greater extent today than at any point in the last 50 years, despite any misgivings we might have about applying this title free from the traditional constraints of education or earning power.

Consider the much-discussed Genius Bar in your local Apple Store - you do have a local Apple Store, right? Much has been made of the elevated bar of Apple-specific knowledge inherent to Apple’s retail ‘geniuses’. The real magic, though, of the Genius is the ability to step outside of the product and help you, the consumer, solve a problem, understand your computer better, or find the Apple product that meets your needs. This is personalized service, shopping and counsel, and breaks apart the notion that the ‘kid’ talking to you about iLife today will be moving down the mall to Lady Foot Locker next month (he will not). Most significantly, the ability to engender confidence that you are being matched with someone who can help you find the right product (not necessarily the one with the best margin), moves the Apple Store up the hierarchy towards something approaching the recommendation of a friend - particularly if you don’t have a Mac-savvy friend - and much earlier in your consideration set.

So why isn’t this catching on like wildfire in the retail world, outside of the occasional personal shoppers and consultants at higher-end apparel retailers? Certainly, employees are trained in cursory product features and benefits (most of the time, although I’d be willing to bet you’ve shared the experience of having an employee read the features of a product to you directly from the box), but it’s difficult to escape the idea that most retail workers you meet have little invested in knowledge specific to the manner in which the products they sell are used, and largely lack the ability to extrapolate the knowledge they do have into the consumer’s kitchen / closet / stereo.

The list of roadblocks to the development of a knowledge-based retail workforce might include:

1. An inventory too large in scope to allow broad-based item-specific knowledge
2. Discomfort on the part of management in empowering workers with this knowledge
3. Lack of incentive on the part of the employee to acquire item-specific knowledge
4. The staggering cost of training (and duly compensating) a new breed of knowledge workers

A number of high-profile stabs have been made in this direction, with decidedly mixed results. Home Depot touts the knowledge of their retail staff, as related to both training and experience, although as a novice handyman myself, I am not infrequently disappointed by their collective ability to answer my questions in a knowledgeable manner. Tweeter, the mid-level consumer electronics chain, espouses a highly-trained staff of knowledge workers, although my experiences in their stores have been heavy-handed grabs at commissions, frankly. Best Buy’s recent campaigns touting the segment-specific knowledge of their employees are laughably contradicted by the truculent teenagers who seem to comprise the great balance of their workforce.

Brands willing to invest in a new breed of knowledge workers will be well-poised to move up that knowledge heirarchy, shifting earlier in the consumer lifecycle, better able to sell premium products to consumers seeking knowledge of their own. These hard economic times, with sales slumping as products continue the long slow march of evolution, set against a backdrop of increased unemployment, seems a perfect opportunity to create the next round of geniuses.