Knowledge Leadership: Creating Value in Organizations (Part 2)

By Sharil Dewa

If knowledge management was a remarkable issue for discussion in think tanks for some time ago, now knowledge leadership is a notable story and has attracted thinkers who work on management and information services fields.

Of course, these issues are not separated from each other and in many aspects overlap each other. Knowledge leadership indicates significant challenges which have been dealt with by managers in recent years. Today it is completely probable that no other factor may have great impact and initiate fundamental changes more than value creation. The convincing evidence for this claim is the increasing interest of organizations in finding new ways to achieve more values and benefits for their organizations.

Types of knowledge leaders

Many organizations have taken the step of appointing a highly visible figure, the chief knowledge officer (CKO), to leverage the collective mind of an enterprise. This approach is the subject of many knowledge leadership discussions. Although there are a number of organizations with a CKO in place, this phenomenon is only one of several approaches in practice today to instill knowledge leadership. Many organizations have embraced knowledge leaders, but they have such titles as knowledge analyst, knowledge manager and knowledge steward. These individuals function very differently than the CKO and often express strong opinions against a central point of knowledge ownership.

The knowledge analyst is responsible for collecting, organizing and disseminating knowledge, usually on demand. Knowledge analysts provide knowledge leadership by becoming walking repositories of best practices - a library of how knowledge is shared and should be shared across the organization. The liability, of course, is that knowledge analysts can easily take all of the best practices with them if they leave the organization. There is also a risk that these individuals become so valuable to the immediate constituency that they are not able to move laterally to other parts of the organization where their skills are equally needed
The knowledge manager is responsible for coordinating the efforts of engineers, architects and analysts. The knowledge manager is most often required in large organizations where the large number of discrete knowledge-sharing processes risk fragmentation and isolation. The knowledge manager provides coordination across processes within a business unit. The risk in having knowledge managers is that fiefdoms (albeit large ones) may form around the success of each manager's domain. Regardless of this pitfall, the knowledge manager may successfully fill the niche of knowledge leader in an organization that realizes the lack of coordination in each of its business units is a primary deterrent to the sharing of knowledge among employees.

However, this single business unit approach can present its own problems in the form of fragmentation of knowledge. In these cases, the organization often relies on a central, command- and-control knowledge leader to provide continuity across multiple, discontinuous groups of knowledge workers.

The chief knowledge officer is responsible for enterprise-wide coordination of all knowledge leadership. The CKO typically reports to or is chartered by the CEO. Although it would seem reasonable that the CKO be part of IT (perhaps reporting to the CIO), this is not often the case. The CKO is not tasked with ownership of the technology infrastructure but rather the methods, practices and content comprising knowledge management solutions. At present, this role is almost always a solo performer with little, if any, staff and no immediate line-of-business responsibility. The CKO role requires advanced knowledge of the collective repositories, skills and expertise that can, if properly matched to the needs of the organization, increase responsiveness to customers (internal and external) and suppliers, which ultimately provides competitive distinction.

Putting a CKO in place is a potential point of sub-optimization. You may end up with someone whose vision of knowledge management dilutes the effectiveness of managing knowledge in each of the particular business units, projects or teams. Instead, these groups need to find the best way to manage knowledge within their area. By its nature, knowledge management is driven by lines of business (LOBs) and people at the extremities of the organization. Therefore, the best you can hope to do is coordinating the knowledge management process, but not truly control it. Because of this, a single knowledge leader, across all lines of business, is tough for LOB managers to support.
The knowledge steward is responsible for providing minimal, but ongoing, support to knowledge users in the form of expertise in the tools, practices and methods of knowledge management. The steward is in the most precarious and most opportunistic of positions. Usually, he or she is an individual who has fallen into the role of helping others to better understand and leverage the power of new technologies and practices in managing knowledge. The term “steward” best resonated in the interviews with the study participants; it conveys responsibility and a willingness to guide others, yet it is also non-intrusive and the near antithesis of ownership.

What is Your Organization’s Need?

Knowledge leaders are educators of best practices and stewards of the frameworks that facilitate knowledge creation and sharing. But they are not owners. Knowledge leadership builds the bridges. Organizational leadership builds the culture. It is the knowledge workers themselves who build the reasons to use knowledge management.

CKO, knowledge manager, architect or steward - how does an organization identify the optimal style of knowledge leadership for its needs? Your vice president of customer care or manager of systems and applications may be your unsung knowledge leader. It may be there is no one. Look at the state of your organization's knowledge sharing, the level of sponsorship for knowledge leadership and the receptivity of its culture today. Then act accordingly. For instance, it would be a mistake to put a CKO into an organization that has little executive interest in knowledge management and where LOB managers exhibit a fundamental mistrust of one other. A CKO cannot make up for pathology of poor communication and mistrust.
There is little doubt that knowledge leadership is an essential ingredient of competition in the next millennium. Begin now to nurture these roles in your organization. Chances are, whatever their titles, you already have knowledge leaders at work that, with a bit of sponsorship, would be ready, able and very willing to step into the role.