I gave a talk last week at the Process.gov conference on the subject of “The Nature of Knowledge Work” which happens also to be the first chapter of Mastering the Unpredictable.  I explore in depth what it is that makes knowledge work different from routine work.  I have converted that talk into a slide cast for your enjoyment 🙂

http://www.slideshare.net/kswenson/the-nature-of-knowledge-work

Jacob Ukelson was at the conference, and he has been busy since then with a blog post “The Five Things I Learned at the ‘Adaptive Case Management’ Conference”  and a slide share as well of his talk on “What to Do When Process Modeling Doesn’t Work” which is also based on his chapter in the book.  He gives an excellent example of an unpredictable process: a board of directors of a bank, realizes that it has possibly too much investment in home real estate loans, and takes some action to address this.  This sort of decision, this sort of response would never, and could never, be modeled in advance.  People instead need to work together “in real time” to work out what needs to be done, and to accomplish this very real goal.

Tom Shepherd was there, and has a writeup in his latest blog entry “Predictability, Practicality and Passion“.  He also gave an excellent presentation on Adaptive Case Management which I hope he converts to a slide cast soon.  Dermot McCauley and Max Pucher braved the dangers of airborne volcanic ash to attend from Ireland, and both gave excellent presentations as well.  I will make a link if they become available.