Knowledge Managers: new roles, new challenges

Feature

posted 1 Nov 1998 in Volume 2 Issue 3

Knowledge Managers - new roles, new challenges

Creating new labels for people is not enough for a Knowledge Management project; every employee must be engaged in the process for it to work effectively. Here, Eric Woods and Madan Sheina outline the various roles of the new Knowledge managers and the challenges they face along the way.

One of the basic tenets of knowledge management is that knowledge needs to be managed with the same responsibility as any other corporate asset. It therefore needs managers that will be responsible for instigating, implementing and monitoring knowledge-management initiatives at different levels.

For most knowledge managers, this is usually only a part of their job specification. Their main task will be to improve the operational effectiveness of the organisation in a specific area - knowledge management is simply the way forward. However, the knowledge manager must show a passionate commitment to knowledge sharing and creation. Each knowledge-management project is a stepping stone in a process of developing a new form of corporate culture. Effective though each step needs to be in its own right, developing a positive feedback loop that can spread knowledge-management initiatives wider is also important.

The ultimate goal should be to engage every employee in contributing to and utilising the corporate memory. But knowledge sharing and knowledge creation will only improve if specific individuals take pivotal roles in promoting knowledge-management goals and implementing knowledge-management projects.

New titles are not enough

The plethora of new job titles that knowledge management is promoting is one sign of its effect on corporate organizations. The danger is that creating new titles will be seen as sufficient in itself to induce a change in corporate culture. Similarly, if knowledge management is "passed off" as an issue for the chief knowledge officer or for a knowledge manager, then it is unlikely to have a significant impact on the main activities of the company. The individuals with an explicit role are only facilitators to help the company as a whole to understand the importance of knowledge management - it is this task which is the most important of all.

The roles we outline are a means of describing some of the necessary tasks involved in promoting and improving knowledge management. These roles may be shared or overlap in numerous ways to fit the culture and structure of individual companies.

The chief knowledge officer

The appointment of a chief knowledge officer (CKO) is the most visible sign of a company s commitment to better knowledge management. It recognises the need for a strategic view of knowledge use within the organisation that is not tied to information systems alone. It should also ensure the knowledge-management initiatives have board-level backing.

The role of the CKO is to:

provide a high-level, strategic view of the importance of knowledge management to the company s business goals

promote knowledge management throughout the organisation

ensure that the necessary incentives and structures are in place to enable knowledge management initiatives to flourish

act as a conduit between the board and the rest of the company so that the goals of knowledge management are understood and shared across the organisation

work closely with the CIO so that knowledge management requirements can be translated into effective information systems, and that the realities of IT are kept in mind when scoping knowledge-management projects

take responsibility for corporate initiatives, such as knowledge mapping, development of corporate taxonomy and thesaurus, and provide a knowledge-management perspective on improvements to the corporate infrastructure

instigate and monitor measures and indicators of progress on knowledge management

manage the knowledge-management specialists within the organisation - providing training, ensuring co-operation and knowledge exchange between knowledge managers

In some companies with a devolved management structure, an over-arching CKO role may not be appropriate. In this case, some of the responsibilities outlined above must fall to managers of specific initiatives or projects, but the high-level vision and commitment that is necessary must be taken on by the CEO or other board member.

The CKO must combine an understanding of both the pragmatics of knowledge management and the business-critical knowledge value chains within the company. They must also have a good sense of organisational politics. As Thomas Davenport has written: "if a knowledge-management initiative is not political, then it is probably not being taken seriously" .

Knowledge project managers

Knowledge-management projects need managers who can combine a multitude of skills. They need to understand the basic business objective of the project and be comfortable with the technologies available. They also need to understand the cultural and behavioural elements of knowledge management. They will need normal project management skills in areas such as team building, budget and schedule control and managing customer requirements and involvement. In addition, they must be part IT expert, part psychologist or anthropologist, and have a strong belief in how improved knowledge sharing can contribute to the core goals of the business.

Subject managers

The corporate memory requires cultivation and - as with most forms of cultivation - weeding is both a necessary and manually intensive task. The day-to-day management of an active repository of corporate knowledge is best done by individuals who understand the content. This is a crucial role that adds immeasurable value to the knowledge base at numerous levels; for example, ensuring that:

discussion groups remain relevant

new contributions are assessed for value

unused or out-of-date documents are archived

This is not simply an administrative task - by raising the quality of the knowledge available, the subject manager encourages people to use and contribute to the system. By their actions, they make a knowledge repository a dynamic, growing resource.

Subject managers are valued for their domain experience; their responsibilities for knowledge management will be a secondary - but very important - role.

Knowledge brokers

Knowledge brokers will become increasingly important in organizations with several knowledge management initiatives under way. While the subject managers may be expert in their own area, knowledge management will often need to span different areas - linking resources across corporate and technological boundaries. The knowledge broker will be an essential market maker , able to link users and suppliers of knowledge throughout the organisation.

Information specialists that work closely with subject managers and have a good grasp of the overall information needs of the organisation will be in a good position to provide this service.

Knowledge management facilitators

Subject managers are experts in content. Organizations also require experts in knowledge-management processes. This role fills a gap between the current expertise offered by IS departments, information specialists and domain experts in end-user departments.

Services that will be needed include:

explaining how technology can support specific knowledge-management initiatives

supporting new knowledge-management projects during the initial phases

helping with compliance to corporate standards

Knowledge leaders

Knowledge leaders are not assigned or necessarily identified as such, but they are invaluable. The knowledge leader or evangelist does not promote the idea of knowledge management, but the practice. Knowledge leaders show how sharing knowledge is an effective way of working - they help promote a culture in which people feel able and willing to share their knowledge, and equally importantly, feel able to make use of the knowledge of others.

Typical knowledge leaders include:

senior consultants who contribute regularly to the best practice database

technicians who provide help to less experienced colleagues

the unofficial teachers and guides who are found in almost all work situations

Such people are the bedrock of a knowledge-sharing culture - where they do not thrive then knowledge management is unlikely to be successful.

The coming of the cybrarian

Knowledge management is at once an immense opportunity and a great threat to the traditional corporate librarian role.

On one hand, information professionals have an opportunity to raise their visibility in the organisation and to utilise their skills in finding, organising and disseminating information.

On the other hand, the librarian is seen as a relic of old ways of working. Internet and intranet access have removed the need for a single source of online access; improved searching tools are taking away the need for specialist query formulation; and more and more information management tasks are being done in end-user departments.

Librarians need to show that they are at the forefront of understanding these changes and that they can work closely with users to develop new forms of knowledge management.

They need to redefine their role higher up the value chain, as agents for the re-use and dissemination of corporate knowledge. Skills and experience in creating and managing taxonomies, for example, will be of increasing importance. Information specialists can also provide important services, such as training and mentoring to help subject managers and other non-specialists develop the skills they need to be effective knowledge managers.

The one thing they should not try to do is be gatekeepers to the corporate memory - controlling access and resources. This will only prompt the business to move their function into business departments and project teams aided by new technology for knowledge management.

New challenges for the CIO and the IS department

Knowledge management is both an opportunity and a threat to the traditional IS department. In particular, the growing significance of knowledge management will make the distinction between the IS contribution to strategic information planning and its role as manager of the corporate IT plumbing much starker.

The opportunity presented is for a new level of integration of IT with the business. CIOs and IS departments that can play a positive role in developing knowledge-management initiatives will find themselves much more closely integrated with core business processes.

However, there is also a danger that the IS department will find itself side-lined if it is unable to respond to the challenge of knowledge management. Some IS departments, for example, are happy to see the uptake of intranets as a means of reasserting control over the corporate infrastructure. If they do not have the vision to work with the business departments to deliver new levels of service this will be a short won victory.

Top-down and bottom-up - and the middle is important too

Knowledge management cannot be imposed from the top - but neither can it flourish unless it is driven and supported by senior management. Knowledge management must be backed by sufficient will on the part of management and receive sufficient acceptance by the employees.

Senior management s task is to create a climate that encourages knowledge sharing, in which staff can feel secure enough to make a full contribution to the evolution of the corporate knowledge base, and where such contributions are adequately recognised and encouraged.

Knowledge management can only be successful if the front-line employees concerned, whether factory floor operators or technical consultants, buy into the values and goals. In order for this to be the case, they must feel that their contributions make a difference, and the best way to achieve this is to ensure that they see direct benefit - be it in terms of access to new information/knowledge themselves, financial rewards or career progression.

The role of mediating between the high-level strategy of senior management and the day-to-day implementation of knowledge-management practices on the front line falls to middle managers. Middle management must be willing to own knowledge-management initiatives and encourage and support their staff in their effort to improve knowledge sharing.

Creating a knowledge sharing culture

The imperatives behind any knowledge-management strategy are to:

build trust

encourage sharing

value innovation

Knowledge-management initiatives will only succeed if an organisation is able to create a culture where these values are accepted as the norm.

The relationships of trust and reciprocity required for knowledge management are not a by-product of a knowledge-management initiative. Even more importantly, they cannot be delivered by technology. They must be cultivated as a prerequisite of successful knowledge management.

A knowledge-sharing culture requires:

employees that feel secure - if there is no security there will be little sharing of knowledge

suitable rewards - sharing knowledge and contributing to the knowledge value chain must be seen as a valued activity in terms of prestige, career progression or salary

enforcement - good knowledge management must be seen as more than an optional factor, employees should be clear that it is an essential part of their job and one on which their performance is measured

reciprocation - although carrots and sticks in the form of rewards and enforcement are an inescapable element of knowledge management, greater benefits will come from ensuring positive feedback from the initiatives themselves. A consultant that benefits from a best practice database is more likely to contribute at the end of his or her own project. A technician who finds a useful tip from a colleague is more likely to make his/her own expertise available. Conversely, users will not enthusiastically contribute to a knowledge-management system that fails to support their needs. Developing a positive feedback loop for those involved in a knowledge-management project is the only way to ensure long-term viability

ownership - above all, the people involved in any knowledge-management project must feel a sense of ownership. They must feel themselves to be stakeholders in the success of the project. This is much more likely, of course, if they already feel they are stakeholders in the organisation.

The error of "build it and they will come"

Knowledge-management software will provide new functions and features that will help organizations implementing knowledge-management projects. But the successful use of this technology depends on the identification of clear business goals for its applications.

There is little value in generic knowledge-management applications - at least, little that will advance beyond what we can do with e-mail and standard network features. Knowledge-management software will be a success if it makes it easier for a team to collaborate over a product launch, to provide critical information on a competitor, or to draw on product expertise from colleagues located worldwide. Such applications must drive the implementation of a knowledge management solution - you cannot implement knowledge management and hope that some good will come of it.

Or even worse - the error of "model it and it will be built"

Modelling has a role at a strategic level in helping an organisation to understand its knowledge chains and identifying the best candidates for knowledge-management initiatives and projects. But knowledge management is, by its nature, concerned with a fast changing environment. It is impossible to wait until users' requirements are modelled in detail. It is equally important that any system should be flexible enough to respond quickly to new or changed requirements.

Knowledge-management projects must learn from the errors of application development and data warehousing - where the desire for "perfection" has too often led to "analysis-paralysis" and the implementation of systems that are out-dated before they are used.

This article appears originally in Knowledge Management: Applications, Markets and Technologies' , written by Eric Woods and Madan Sheina of Ovum Ltd. To obtain a copy, priced £1495 call 0171 312 7318.