The Knowledge Manager role evolves continuously. Therefore, I would like to sum up some of the insights I’ve noticed recently. This summary should also explain why I enjoy to be a knowledge manager in a global business consulting organization.

Knowledge Manager as an Integrator

In a knowledge-based economy nearly all  companies deliver at least some kind of knowledge-based services. The corporate knowledge manager plays an important role in integrating knowledge management methods and practices at all levels of the company. This is more the traditional part of our job:

• Strategy integration: on the one hand the KM objectives should be derived from the business strategy. However, on the other hand it’s equally important to include knowledge-based objectives into the corporate strategy (e.g. intellectual property services)
• Process integration: the knowledge management processes have to be part of the day-to-day work. Therefore, most companies should rather have a “KM Process Integration Office” than a pure knowledge management organization.
• Content integration: most waste is created in the content lifecycle, typically tons of assets created with high effort are barely used again. The effective management of the content lifecycle is a key discipline for a knowledge manager.
• System integration: from obvious requirements, as e.g. an integrated search, to more complex ones, as e.g. offering easy-to-consume content channels for the most important stakeholders within or outside the company.

Knowledge Manager as an Orchestrator

Knowledge management is all about creating the right environment for the creation, sharing, and re-use of knowledge. This means essentially to create and maintain a productive collaborative environment. That’s may be what some of you would name “People Integration”. This is the communication part of the job which makes us certainly to one of the most visible role in the company. Not always to our good if e.g. you haven’t enough resources at hand to respond to the expectations of the field. Again, I would like to have a brief look at different levels of orchestration:

• Leadership orchestration: senior management support was always an important success factors for KM initiatives. Nowadays, the senior management expects more: they expect from their knowledge manager to be one of their trusted advisor regarding knowledge-based business strategies and operations’ challenges
• Corporate functions orchestration: what makes the knowledge manager role so interesting is that you have interfaces with nearly all corporate functions, e.g. marketing, education, research & development etc. Typically the corporate function leads are your peers and KM aspects are integrated into their work area too.
• Market unit orchestration: if you work in a global organization you know what I mean by orchestrating the various point of views at regional and local level. It’s not obvious e.g. to have standards and guidelines applied across all important market units.
• Communities of practice orchestration: the management of the lifecycle of those virtual teams of newbies and experts is typically the most challenging part of the job of a knowledge manager, because virtual team contributions tend to be perceived as “hobby” by most line managers.

Knowledge Manager as a Designer

Eventually, I would like to close this summary by outlining the creative part of the Knowledge Manager job which is basically all about applying new methods to address challenges and issues.

• Content consumption design: I’ve experienced the Design Thinking methodology as one of the most promising ways to develop solutions to make the consumption of content as easy as possible in a given corporate environment.
• Continuous improvement design: Applying the lean principles also helps a lot to avoid “waste” and identify improvement potentials at all levels of integration and orchestration.
• Shared services design: knowledge management requirements may be one of the most important drivers to offer a complete shared services landscape to the business role owners.
• Change management design: knowledge management is about connecting people to people and creating the right collaborative environment. Therefore, change is and will be a permanent companion to our work. Using change management methods helps me getting things changed.

So, I would be looking forward to getting your comments and feedback on this brief summary. Which aspect is the most important to you?