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Knowledge Management Roles

I have been looking at the Knowledge Management recruitment sector over the last week or so,
and find it amazing that the majority of the so called KM jobs focus on the 'KM Manager' not only
requiring extensive KM Implementation and Development experience, but also requiring in depth
experience of the field in which they are going to support and operate; and in some cases the
necessary 'IT Expertise' to build the KM System (the IT Issue with KM will be the subject of a
separate Blog Post).

My view is that if you want a Knowledge Manager, or a Chief Knowledge Officer, or whatever you
want to call the 'Knowledge Lead' within an organisation, then these individuals should be
responsible for developing and establishing how Knowledge is utilised within an organization.
This in itself is a huge undertaking, and requires expertise and understanding of how to introduce
change and establish cultures to support sharing Knowledge, and also the vision and strength of
character to commit to something that is hard to visualize, difficult to frame and most difficult of all
being able to show direct benefits in these uncertain and financially restricted times.

To put it into the context of Project Management; you don't have a Project Manager with an
absolute knowledge of the legal and contracts area, or finance area, this expertise is provided by
the Project Support Staff, the so called experts. In Knowledge Management terms, these are the
Knowledge Champions; the holders of the Knowledge, and the Knowledge Manager needs to
build a framework around how best to utilise these ‘Champions’.

If Knowledge Managers are required to have expertise of these particular areas of functionality,
then conversely shouldn’t it also be a requirement that the so called experts/champions have
experience of Knowledge Management? Then they could implement KM without the need for
recruiting so called Knowledge Management experts.

The successful implementation of KM will only be realised by a team approach; the Knowledge
Lead developing the strategy and approach to KM in conjunction with the stakeholders. If an IT
Delivery mechanism is deemed the best means of achieving this, then source the expertise to
build this, and then build into the approach a means of connecting the Knowledge Experts to
those that need the Knowledge.

My point is that the individuals who have expertise within KM are specialists in that field, and
should be utilised on that basis, it is the role of the ‘Champions’ to have specialist knowledge of
the subject area, and whilst recruitment continues to be based on the Knowledge Lead requiring
specialist knowledge and even IT Experience, organizations will not be able to realise the true
benefits of KM.

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