Why a CKO?

The foundation of the industrialized economy has shifted from natural resources to intellectual assets. While many companies have been compelled to examine the knowledge underlying their businesses and how that knowledge is used, some have been successful in consistently creating new knowledge, disseminating it, embodying it in technologies, products, and services, sharing best practices and reusing some of the existing knowledge. Knowledge Management(KM) initiatives - across industries and companies - have already saved considerable amount of money and brought down the cycle time in many products, processes and services. The KM has now become sine-qua-non particularly for financial services, consulting and software industries.

The Primary Role of a CKO

Due to this trend, many companies across the globe are creating the post of Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) for:

• Designing and installing techniques and processes to create, protect, (intellectual assets like patents, inventions, unique processes etc., particular to an organization or industry) and use of known or existing knowledge.
• Designing and creating environments and activities to discover and release knowledge that are not known.
• Articulating the purpose and nature of managing knowledge as a resource and embodying it in other initiatives.

The role of CKO is still in embryonic stage and different organizations have different expectations. The role is yet to be established formally in the organizational chart. Their position in the organization chart largely depends on the kind of contribution that is expected . Besides a successful CKO would change his job often.

First a CKO has to understand that the knowledge exists in pockets within the organization and also outside the organization - like information about customers and suppliers. Then he has to bring in linkages across this spectrum of knowledge, so that the organization benefits. He should be a visionary, able to see the big picture and think of doing newer things and yet focus on deliverable results. Knowledge in organizations exist at two levels: Explicit and Tacit.

Explicit knowledge lends itself to codify, store, retrieve and reuse. For example, once a knowledge asset like software code or a manual is developed and paid for, it can be used many times over at a very low cost with little modifications. It is typical in consulting and software firms where the efficient reuse of codified knowledge is essential when they are dealing with similar problems over and over. Explicit knowledge is that knowledge which resides in software code, manuals, market data, information in books, articles, other multi-media products etc...

Tacit knowledge is closely tied to a person or a group, which focus on dialogue. This tacit knowledge - has not been codified and can't be, because it is new or it is new knowledge which is evolving or a new problem for which no answer exists yet - is transferred in brainstorming sessions and one-to-one conversations for arriving at deeper insights for problems the individual or the group needs to solve. Tacit knowledge is difficult to articulate in writing and hence too difficult to codify and is acquired through personal experience. It includes scientific expertise, operational know-how, and insights about an industry, business judgement and technological expertise.

Competencies of a CKO
An ideal CKO should be a technologist and an environmentalist.The two key competencies of a CKO are: technologist and environmentalist. As a technologist he/she should understand which technologies can contribute to capturing, storing, exploring, and sharing knowledge. He/she should work in conjunction with a CIO, since the KM initiatives call for the knowledge of emerging new technologies. The KM initiative is often based on IT, such as creating knowledge directories, development of knowledge-sharing groupware, or building intranet. He/she has to be sufficiently informed about what technology to evaluate, what works, when to adopt a technology, how to appreciate the opportunities and also how to assess any demanding implementation issues.

For managing tacit knowledge the CKO needs to be an environmentalist. He/she needs to create social environments in organizations that stimulate and facilitate communities of practice with common interest which rarely interact with each other. For example, all those in different functions who serve key customers or have information on them may be brought together or connected in order to exchange knowledge. The role of a CKO is particularly critical in R&D organizations, where new knowledge or inventions come from thinking at the edge of current technology or processes, where disruptive technology or processes emerge often. CKO has the responsibility of developing communities without formalizing them, as formalizing communities become bureaucratic structures. They also have to nurture communities to tap their natural energy to share knowledge, build on the processes and systems they already use, and enhance the role of natural leaders. CKO has to identify those topics where leveraging knowledge will provide value to the business, customers as well as to the knowledge communities. The CKO can organize communities topic-wise or by a particular expertise.

The Ambassadorial Role of a CKO

Building relationships across various levels in the organization is another crucial skill that the CKO must have. He/she has to bring in ideas and seed them and listen to other people's ideas and back them if it makes sense for the KM initiative. The CKO can operate only through influence, persuasion, demonstration and the willingness to let others take center stage and receive credit. An ideal CKO would be an extrovert who likes to socialize, and build close relationships with others, energetic, excitement seeking and cheerful. He should be able to deal with stress and sensitive situations than average and should not dwell on problems in a detrimental way. It is also important for him/her to be able to read the company's appetite for change and appreciate how to connect to, and work along with, other change initiatives.

KM initiatives work best when it is coordinated with HR, IT and Corporate Strategies. Hence the CKO needs to choose a KM approach that supports a clear competitive strategy - which benefits both the company and its customers.The CKO alongwith the HR need to develop a real incentive system that encourages employees to write down what they know and get those documents into the electronic repository for explicit knowledge. In fact, the level and quality of employees' contribution to the document database should be part of their annual performance reviews. For tacit knowledge employees' should be rewarded for sharing knowledge directly with other people. Such contributions can be evaluated on how much value they have given to their colleagues. The CKO should have the ability to identify quick wins, i.e., the ability to win potential supporters and also skeptics by actively demonstrating how KM helps them in their work and by creating reference tools or good case studies that produce benefits to the organizations.

Conclusion

The hard task for the CKO in most KM efforts lie in changing the organization's culture and employees' work habits. It lies in getting employees to take the time to articulate and share the real quality knowledge. If a group of employees don't already share knowledge, don't already have plenty of contacts, don't already understand what insights and information will be useful to each other, IT tools and techniques would hardly be of any use. Finally, there are four key challenges in building KM communities:

• The technical challenge is to design human and information systems that not only make information available, but also help community members think together.
• The social challenge is to develop communities that share knowledge and still maintain enough diversity of thought to encourage thinking.
• The management challenge is to create an environment that truly values sharing knowledge.
• The personal challenge for each employee is to be open to the ideas of others, willing to share ideas, and maintain a thirst for new knowledge.