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?

I just met some friends and colleagues from my former employer Comma Soft in Bonn last Friday evening. We talked a lot and enjoyed some rounds of Kölsch beer: it was your shout, Sascha, thank you!

It was also a kind of “knowledge pub” around the question: “What will be the future of the company?”. It happened last week, too, that I participated in the “Knowledge Cafe Masterclass” led by the (I know that you don’t like this) KM guru David Gurteen. It was set as a pre-conference tutorial of the KnowTech 2010. I particularly enjoyed getting to know some new interesting KM peers of other German companies.

So, what is this “Knowledge Cafe” all about? It’s a good method to initiate a dialogue or to support change in an organization. David has explained the method extensively on his website. The Knowledge Cafe is pretty similar to the WorldCafe approach. However, it’s easier to “sell” to managers in a company. David has built the method based on works of Jay Cross, Theodore Zeldin, David Weinberger, and David Bohm.

I would use it e.g. instead of a long-winded presentation or as an alternative to coffee corner sessions. The challenge is to create the readiness for dialogue, to have a non-intrusive facilitator, and to be comfortable with the outcome “what people take away in their heads”. It’s by no mean the right method for a virtual meeting. Thank you David, it was a pleasure to meet you!

Photo from amirjina (Creative Commons License)

So, what’s on in the knowledge management scene for climate change? Who are the “thought leaders” regarding KM for climate change? A first round tour:

WorldChanging is always a good place to start and a top site for sustainable solutions. However, the search shows no hits for “knowledge management”.

Grist is the #1 green website according to the Guardian. Same picture here: no content for “knowledge management”.

RealClimate offers a forum for climate scientists. Also, no content on “knowledge management”.

KMAfrica seems to be an excellent knowledge sharing platform. Going to have a closer look at it during the upcoming weeks.

Climate-L.org is another interesting site from a “team of the International Institute for Sustainable Development’s Reporting Services (IISD RS) brings you news and information on the actions of international organizations in responding to the problem of global climate change.”

I decided to pursue my growing second passion and started as a knowledge management consultant back in 2000. I’ve been with my current employer for nearly three years working as the knowledge manager for the 600-employee business transformation consulting group of SAP consulting.

• Achim Berg’s presentation (CEO Microsoft) introduced nothing new to the audience. I assume that each attendee has followed conversations e.g. on the differences between “digital natives”, “baby boomers” and “generation X”. The focus of his presentation was on technology as an enabler for social networking. A typical sentence was “knowledge gets lost if it’s not supported with IT”. The only thing that stroke my attention was an Economist study of 2008 which has been quoted as “companies which invest in enterprise 2.0 are three times more profitable than the average”. Unfortunately, there is no source for this study in Achim Berg’s slides.
• Dave Snowden (CEO CognitiveEdge) has given the audience a totally other experience. His keynote on “Why Does Social Computing Work?” was excellent “food for thought”, especially for those of us who still believe in KM processes, governance and infrastructure. His speech is available via the website of the institute CognitiveEdge.
• Eventually, Utz Claassen – one of the few ‘enfant terrible’ of the German management scene – presented a very good overview on the value delivered by knowledge management. The interesting point was that he focussed on knowledge management as a value driver and that he used strictly business administration language to argue. Claassen did also a very good job in establishing a clear interrelationship between business strategy and KM. The only weak point of his presentation was the total number of slides and the amount of text on his slides.