Convincing someone that there’s a better way to address a particular work task doesn’t seem daunting

Does that mean that making substantive change when (potentially) everyone is (potentially) connected is about task literacy, not work literacy ?

Harold notes the "context of where "work" is going and how we can help shape it". As often as not "work" is bifurcating .. either dumbed-down for the individual worker by highly structured systems where the worker is effectively a part of the input mechanism, or being "smartened up" wherein the worker is creating, usually together with others, pertinent and useful knowledge.

For the sake of this discussion let me focus on the second, and note that it is likely to become less and less effective for smart talent to work in systems or cultures that do not value the individual's role in a web of exchanges, wherein she or he will need to gather information, interpret it, shape it, and continue to participate in flows of information and conversation. The tasks in that context often get both more generalized and at times more specific, but are almost always shaped by the flows and the circumstances they address or create.

There used to be (and no doubt still is in many organizations) the notion of delegated authority, from a given level on down. I think it is getting clearer that it's the design of work and the structures in which work happens that must be changed to adapt to ongoing flows of information and connection, and I tend to think that doing things in "small, isolated ways" to realize slow incremental improvements one project at a time, while useful, won't be enough to obtain the probable benefits, both for the organization and the individual knowledge worker.

As well, the limits to the effectiveness of industrial era command-and-control have been chronicled over and over again in countless management and org effectiveness books, but in many instances those limits are still in place.

I am fond of this quote by Gary Hamel in his recent book "The Future of management" ...

While Management 2.0 won’t completely supplant Management 1.0, the two versions aren’t entirely compatible. There are going to be conflicts. Indeed, I think the most bruising contests in the new millenium won’t be fought along the lines that separate one competitor or business ecosystem from another, but will be fought along the lines that separate those who wish to preserve the privileges and power of the bureaucratic class from those who hope to build less structured and less tightly managed organizations. Richard Florida sees the same battle shaping up. In The Rise of the Creative Class, he puts it bluntly: "The biggest issue at stake in this emerging age is the ongoing tension between creativity and organization." This is, perhaps, the most critical and intractable management trade-off of all, and therefore, the one most worthy of inspired innovation.

It will take more than advances in technology to issue in the post-managerial age. As I noted earlier, management and organizational innovation often lags far behind technological innovation.

Right now, your company has 21st-century Internet-enabled business processes, mid-20th-century management processes, all built atop 19th-century management principles.