A Chief Knowledge Officer position communicates to everyone that your organization takes its knowledge seriously. It also gives your knowledge management initiative a figurehead. But what is a Chief Knowledge Officer? What do they do? Where should they come from – inside or outside of the organization?
What is a Chief Knowledge Officer?
A Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) is an organizational leader that focuses on maximizing the use of their company’s knowledge in order to create value. They are also the keeper of the knowledge management program and in charge of the tasks and responsibilities of the knowledge management team.
CKO’s help organizations capitalize on their knowledge by implementing processes that enable knowledge to be shared, stored, retrieved, and created. CKO’s also help organizations divest knowledge that no longer has value. They can then focus resources on initiatives that will benefit the company.
A CKO position within an organization also helps draw attention to knowledge issues within the company. Furthermore, since a CKO is positioned at the managerial level, they are better able to access the resources needed to support a knowledge management initiative.
What is a Chief Knowledge Officer Responsible For?
A CKO has a variety of roles and responsibilities. Their most common duties typically include:
- Assessing the existing knowledge within the corporation
- Developing processes that guide the knowledge management initiative
- Identifying gaps in existing organizational knowledge
- Facilitating knowledge sharing strategies
- Promoting knowledge management within the organization
- Measuring the success of the initiative
These responsibilities require that a person has the skills and abilities to travel many organizational terrains. They need to be effective communicators in order to promote the initiative within the company. They must also be adept at connecting people, working within a team, and knowing how to persuade people to change the way they work. They must possess strong leadership qualities and have extensive IT skills.
Hire Internally or Externally?
This question is a challenge as both hiring someone inside the company and hiring someone externally have advantages and disadvantages.
If you hire someone internally, that person will be familiar with your business. However, you need to choose the right person from your internal staff. They have ideally been there for years and have established personal credibility and a proven track record. You would like to see that they have held a number of positions within the organization and that these experiences have given them a more in-depth knowledge of how your company operates. They should also be well-connected with management and executives. They must know the personalities they are dealing with and understand how to navigate and leverage managerial perspectives.
The problem with hiring internally is that this person may be unable to see the faults of the organization. They may not have enough distance between themselves and the problems to look at the situation objectively and make a plan for change.
The advantage of an external hire is that they can view the organization with a fresh set of eyes. They are easily able to identify the problems and think of creative solutions. However, they lack the advantage that an insider has and have a steep learning curve to understand your organization’s existing processes and procedures.
Hiring internally or externally is a subjective decision. That is, there is no one right answer. The key point is who you are hiring. Making sure you have the right person for the job is vital to the success of your knowledge management program.