As organizations become more dependent on single-time efforts to generate new value, great pressure is applied to the people resources who will do the work. Management often responds to the demands for rapid delivery by applying industrial era practices that worked well when operating factories and general staff. These measures, however, do not fit the realities of modern knowledge workers.

The result on projects is a limited number of people are commonly assigned to far too many projects. While this may "look" productive to high-level observers, it is failing miserably. Projects are taking far too long to complete, project planning is largely ignored and knowledge professionals are being blamed and compromised in the process. As a result, morale is low in many project organizations.

This presentation examines the reasons for these problems and identifies behaviors that are creating the loss of productivity. A series of specific strategies are then provided that should be implemented by modern project-dependent organizations to more fully utilize knowledge professionals on their projects.

As Peter Drucker noted, "…making knowledge workers more productive requires changes in the attitude not only on the part of the individual knowledge worker, but on the part of the whole organization."

The concepts presented in this paper are the result of a six month research project conducted by Chuck Tryon. Over 30 senior project professions ranging from CEOs to experienced project team members, participated in this research. This research is an outgrowth of Chuck’s work with the University of Oklahoma on Knowledge Management.