Dave, how many CKOs are you seeing today? In all my contacts, I only know one, and that's for a not-for-profit. Am wondering how prevalent they are.

I find myself agreeing with most of your points, though I find it very difficult to imagine a rotating KM leadership. However, I'm wondering if the discussion shouldn't also be put in the context of the specific stage of KM evolution that an organization is transiting through. Is it possible that in the early stage of KM implementation, it is indeed essential to have a strong CKO-type position able to develop an overall KM framework for the organization, but as the KM framework takes root and KM roles across the organization are established, a rotating leadership and decentralized approach become both more effective and sustainable?

Hardly any CKOs around Stacy, and those who are tend to be in junior positions often within IT. One of the reasons for that is that its a bad idea!
Barbara, sorry I don;t think you need a full time person to get started in KM, do that they will start to create an empire. Better they know they are there for a period AND that they have other work to do as well. Maybe then they will not be tempted to create a KM framework, but rather allow a diverse range of initiatives to happen and allow some (but not too much) structure to emerge.

Hi Dave,

This is very interesting. Am I right in thinking that this is a partial reversal of your previous position, which seemed to be anti- the appointment of a CKO position of any sort?

I have some general comments/questions about how this sort of system would work in practice:

- it sounds like the CKO is closer to the concept of a Government minister (English or Australian) than a traditional CxO roles in that they won't necessarily have expertise but are intended to be advocates to the rest of the senior management team

- would you expect the CKO to have backfill support for their normal tasks during those 6 months? Or are they expected to do all the CKO stuff in addition to their "real" job?

- how do you avoid having the support staff "ghetto-ized" since they won't be integrated with any other business function?

Very large corporations frequently organize their senior executive team by function - Sales, Marketing, IT, Finance, R&D and by region - North America, Latin America, East Asia, South Asia, EU, Eastern Europe, Africa, Middle East, etc. They end up with a team of about 12 which is about the largest group that can reasonably expect to work together. The divisions they choose reveal a lot about how that corporation thinks about themselves and about the outside world. Normally, executives are not allowed to stay in any one role for longer than 3 years. Clearly this is done so executives do not build empires and they gain experience from working in different functions and regions.

If they choose to implement your suggestion, which I think is very good and practical up to a point, then it shows that the organization takes KM seriously and wants to see it nurtured and supported in the corporation. Having a network of middle-managers to support the middle-up-down diffusion of KM practice throughout the corporation will reinforce the corporation believes KM is central to its long-term viability and success.

I have 2 suggestions for your proposal.

1. The KM should spend absolutely no more than 3 years in the role. This must be enforced rigorously.

2. The team of international experts should meet each year with the CKO and the entire executive team.

I'm inclined to think that the kind of organisation that would appoint a CKO is - almost by definition - the kind of organisation which won't be able to make a lasting change to a knowledge organisation. I like the distinction made by Ronald Heifetz (reported by Kegan/Lahey in Immunity to Change between technical change (e.g. go on a diet, or appoint a CKO) and adaptive change (change the cognitive basis of yourself or your organisation so that you value health or knowledge for itself).

Right on, David. Centralizing in a CKO defeats the entire purpose of harnessing the brainpower of the whole organization. KM is more a VALUE than a function.

As such it needs regular support from the CEO, but it must burble up from the bottom up, as I understand IBM does by setting up wikis.

Mark

I want to add to my previous post that I agree the KM role should be 50% of the time of one of the senior executive roles. I don't think 6 months to a year is long enough. Two years may be better and it could rotate thru all of the existing executive roles. It is doubtful firms will add a completely new role to the senior team.

My impression which could be wrong but it seems to me that the CKO role still exists at a senior level in the professional services firms. They seem to be at the junior partner level which is still quite senior. This is in Asia which may be different from Europe.

Thought-provoking, Dave. I can see the logic in your proposal and do believe that it may be much more effective to have a senior manager (someone who understands the organization's business/operations/people etc) play the role of a CKO on a temporary basis.

I especially agree with your first point that over centralization leads to an alienation of sorts, more often than not.

I understand that a small team under a changing CKO can strive to provide the continuity, along with middle manager representation within each unit and an experts panel. But, based on past experiences, I suspect that CKOs (or for that matter anyone else) who are aware that they will be around only for a short period of time tend to focus on short-term gains rather than long-term plans. I somehow don't see a concrete and consistent (KM) vision emerging from such a situation. The CKO's staff may be interested but might lack the authority and the clout. And the experts panel may not have the ownership required.

One thing that occurs to me is to mandate that only a person who has played senior and key roles in the organization should take up the role of a CKO - he could always have a KM specialist(s) working alongside. Avoiding the alienation is up to the team....and the way they approach KM (both the concepts and implementation).

PS: These are my immediate thoughts. Waiting to see this discussion expand further...

Thought provoking and refreshing; rarely have found fresh thinking on this topic-- we could have benefited greatly from your view over the past few years David as we struggled through our design work, which forced us to deal with these issues.

I came to some similar conclusions after years of R&D and thousands of discussions with organizations at the top, bottom, and in-between-- might be of interest.

1) We found that in most orgs the philosophy, process, and functions (intent of KM) need to be distributed, but each situation was different -- at times radically different for pragmatic and necessary reasons (legal, security) -- frankly causing the software architect some grief (me)until we over came the adaptability issue in an affordable manner (a recurring theme here and elsewhere).

2)Given that an enterprise or organization exists for a mission (albeit questionable at times), is a legal and economic entity, with management sometimes held accountable for policy and decisions, centralization of the CKO role is necessary. But like David suggests -- we made a mistake even calling the module a CKO module -- revealing the buzzword definition problem in KM circles -- some took it the wrong way -- did more damage than good in many cases. However, we were able to automate sufficient tasks that the centralized role is very much a part time position on the computing side, need not be conducted by a titled person (we know of a few dozen CKOs), and in many cases shouldn't be-- in some orgs that are so blessed to have capable leadership-- I like the CEO taking that role as much as he/she is able. Again the need for adaptability, particularly in the digital work environment which is historically rigid-- was a key.

3) The system design should include some centralization functions (in digital world or real-- security, policy, legal, meritocracy), but also have a similar function enabling large business units, project team leaders, and last but certainly not least the individual, where most of the future value lives in modern organizations. From a KM perspective, dealing with how the org and individual personalization interact was among the most interesting of our design process.

I am agnostic on the revolving CKO issue, except that agree that whatever label one puts on it-- everyone should be exposed to the learning organization philosophy -- in order to convert that philosophy to reality however, we had to employ a deep systems approach to organizational design.

The primary challenges not only had to overcome the organizational challenges, but also the many -- in some cases more difficult-- in computing.

--allowing adaptability without needing to reprogram-- essential for differentiality and affordability

--dealing with interoperability issues

--providing the ability to align interests between the individual/project/unit/ and org

--prevent empire building and all that comes with it -- easier said than done

I worked on our system design for many years.. after two leading online learning networks. One key was interoperability between units and orgs, which required either a fairly predatory approach with entrenched vendors -- very expensive integration, or adoption of 'universal' standards.

In the end I embraced the W3C standards for the semantic web-- followed for years and they moved in the direction we needed to go, eventually providing most of the functionality we needed. Several start-ups embraced early and finally Oracle offered a major product, making it more doable -- slowly but almost surely, adoption is occurring. Google just embraced a video standard for example.

An interesting related article by Jenny Zaino discusses two important benefits of a good semantic design-- meritocracy, and crisis prevention.

http://www.semanticweb.com/features/article.php/3835551/Could-Semantic-Technology-Help-Get-Your-Next-Raise.htm

Realize you are speaking organization and not only computational here, but given the intrusion of the beast into virtually every organization, unlike many in KM, I found these issues necessary to address in computing. Thanks for the discussion - MM

Nice post! Wrt to your suggestion for 'a diverse panel of international experts' I was wondering: do you mean external experts or internal ones. I like the idea of external experts because this keeps the focus of the KM program linked with outside trends in KM and reporting no progress in the KM program is more embarrassing than to an internal group.

I feel your pain. I was labeled the the CKO/Department Head of KM when hired in and it has been an anchor of sorts. For all of the awareness that I do and the support offered from the executive leadership they still do not feel responsible for KM.

I strongly feel that KM needs a champion, but maybe more that that KM has to be inculturated throughout the organization. It is an all hands effort. So much so that I actually found greater strength and input toward KM when I decentralized it. I know act as an internal consultant to facilitate and unlock the potential from the boardroom to the workcenter.

It has been proposed that KM will be supported through the fitness reporting standards and has become the expectation rather than the exception. Understanding the benefits of KM in the decision making process places a value on the critical thinking and truely operationalizes the outcomes of leaders, supervisors and all knowledge workers.

Mark said it well when he pointed out these critical factors
"--allowing adaptability without needing to reprogram--essential for differentiality and affordability
--dealing with interoperability issues
--providing the ability to align interests between the individual/project/unit/and org."

The last being maybe the most important. Because when you start with the indvidual you will build in trust and accountability and if they are supported loyalty will surely follow. KM can be the force multiplier.

This is great - a really useful thread. Thanks Dave for kicking it off.

Initial thoughts:

1. Steve Bounds's 'ghetto-ized' point: any institutionalisation of KM, by setting up a dedicated unit etc. will have the alienation affect that Steve and others have recognised -"its not my responsibility, its theirs". Unless KM is everyone's responsibility you won't get the benefits - exactly as Demming preached for quality.

2. Creating a truly learning and knowledge sharing organisation cannot be achieved in the short-term - thanks Nimmy for that very pertinent observation - and won't come from the typical Board-level approach (appoint a CKO and assume it's done). It has to come from the CEO - his leadership style, priorities and people focus. Then it has to be inculcated into the 'way we work' for every member of the team, burbling up from below, as Mark expressed it (I wish I had said that!), not brought in and managed from above.

3. When the organisation has achieved a dialectic, trusting and sharing culture, not silo-bound, obsessed with process and internally focused targets, then it's possible to achieve sharing and exploitation of knowledge. This must be actively supported (NOT driven) by the right kind of IT and HR infrastructure, to empower, support and encourage the changes in behaviour that will finally generate Reese's "expectation" rather "exception" of KM across the organisation.

So if I was in Dave's shoes I would strongly advocate losing the KM label and focus instead on building a well-led, open and trusting culture, strengthened by an enlightened IT and HR environment.

Keep the comments coming!