Strategic Knowledge Services Management: The Essentials

Here we are, knowledge services directors with responsibility for the management of strategic knowledge in our employing organizations. 

Most of the time we're required to deal with standard management functions. Once in a while, though, a real opportunity comes along, and we find ourselves positioned to move the organization forward in terms of knowledge services. 

Two recent queries from colleagues got me to thinking about how we might prepare for such an occasion.

One colleague asks what essentials he should have in his basket "as he floats through the KM/knowledge services cloud on a balloon" - as he charmingly puts it. Another colleague notes that he may likely be presented with the opportunity to re-structure his organization's specialized library into the company's knowledge center, a knowledge nexus for all knowledge services-related transactions and functions.

Here are the "essentials" I would aim for:

• Extremely high visibility in the organization Make it your business to ensure that everyone understands what strategic knowledge is. Make sure they know that if they have any exercise, task, product development idea, project, or just plain ol' document management issues to deal with or choose from, your strategic knowledge management skills make you to go-to person (or your team if you have several people in your office).   
  

• Structural "fit" Position your knowledge services functional unit to ensure it supports units and programs where the action is. You and your staff want to be known for taking on the tough tasks, the hard stuff that no one else - even the subject experts - can figure out for themselves (or who get it wrong). Stay away from the kid stuff. And when you and your team are part of a successful strategic knowledge sharing scenario, promote the hell out of it. Let anybody who gets within ten feet of you know how tough the job was and how great it was to pull it off. And be sure to give credit to the people from outside your unit who worked with your team to make it a successful.
  

• Build your troops Within every department or functional unit in the organization, identify someone to be that unit's designated person who - while focusing on the specific subject or functionality of the unit - has responsibility as the knowledge services point person for the unit. This person doesn't have to be an information, knowledge, or strategic learning "professional" per se, but it should be someone who is assigned when hired to "help" the unit in terms of information, knowledge, or strategic learning (and the person doesn't have to have top-heavy qualifications - just an interest in helping people find what they need to know). Once you've identified the point person for the unit, you and your team take responsibility for and work with unit management in mentoring, advising, and coaching the point person so they learn to direct people to your knowledge center - the organizational knowledge nexus - for any query having to do with finding and learning what they need to know
  

Leading to...

• Knowledge leadership Establish yourself and your team as the strategic learning specialists for the organization. Your goal is to make sure the knowledge development/knowledge sharing (KD/KS) process is "built in" to the organizational culture. Talk about what Dale Stanley refers to as the "catalytic" quality of knowledge services, how KD/KS enables you and the people you come in contact with to create knowledge value through KD/KS. Use the language. Get people to talking about strategic knowledge and what strategic knowledge is for each person's workplace. Create the KD/KS buzz in your organization.
  

• Go holistic. Finally (and very appropriate for this week, in which we are observing the 100th anniversary of Peter Drucker's birth), take whatever steps are necessary to see that you and your team support the entire organization. A recent article in Harvard Business Review offers that Mr. Drucker's real contribution lies in his "integrative, holistic thinking." Integrative, holistic thinking works in managing strategic knowledge services, too. Make it enterprise-wide. Don't allow yourself and your staff to become the intellectual "pets" of this or that research unit or function. If that's what's needed, get yourself or a staff member embedded in that unit's projects, on a case-by-case basis. Your job is to be the KD/KS process managers, the knowledge thought leaders, for the entire organization.

Strategic Knowledge - A Letter to SLA's Members

If I were invited to send a letter to SLA’s members at this particular time in history, here is what I would say:

Dear Colleagues,

This letter is being sent to you a few days before polls open for the historic vote on the name of the association.

I am writing to you today because I will not be in my usual workplace during the 16 November – 9 December voting period. I will vote though, because we live and work in a society that is connected globally. Even though I will be at a remote location – on assignment for a client – SLA is an international association and is managed so that I can vote in the election from wherever I am.

To me, this happy state of affairs exemplifies what this election is about. I know the history of SLA pretty well, and I’ve researched and studied how decisions were made over the past 100 years. Until the last few years, any SLA election required a mail ballot, or the presence of members in a single meeting room.

We don’t have to do that anymore, because we are part of a society in which economic, technological, and sociological advances have eliminated such restrictions. We can all vote, and we can do so from wherever we happen to be at the time the ballot is sent to us electronically. We are a boundaryless organization.

Our membership should be boundaryless as well. The work we do – providing management and service delivery functions for strategic knowledge relating to whatever organization, group, team, task force, or other entity we’re associated with – is critical, essential, and highly desirable. Regardless of our job titles or individual roles in the management of strategic knowledge assets, we are the guardians of strategic knowledge for the organization. We have the decidedly honorable task of ensuring that strategic knowledge assets – however defined and however utilized – are maintained and accessed as well as they can be maintained and accessed. Excellence of quality in strategic knowledge asset management is not an exception with us – it is our fundamental purpose. It is why we do what we do.

With this election, we have the opportunity to take our dedication to excellence to a new level. When we have identified ourselves as strategic knowledge professionals, we will find ourselves recognized and acknowledged for the excellence and dedication with which we manage strategic knowledge assets for our employers. When that happens, an accumulation of professional barriers will be removed and we will be positioned as knowledge thought leaders in our organizations.

Let me share two examples. In one, a speaker at a recent public event described the pollution in two important bodies of water on opposite sides of North America. In his presentation, he spoke strongly about the need for knowledge sharing, for the development of a knowledge strategy through which the leaders of the various industries, academic institutions, government agencies, and other affected societal entities could pool their intellectual efforts, their intellectual infrastructure as it were, and devise a plan for dealing with the pollution and resolving the problem.

In another example, a consulting company specializing in KM, knowledge services, and the building of the organizational knowledge culture is called to a developing country to create a knowledge strategy for a humanitarian body, an organization that seeks to improve the lives of millions of disadvantaged people who simply want – and deserve – to live a better life. The organization exists to help these people, and to achieve organizational effectiveness, a knowledge strategy for managing the vast accumulated body of knowledge related to the organization’s work must be devised. The assignment is to align the organization’s strategic knowledge assets with its organizational purpose.

In both examples, it is knowledge – strategic knowledge specific to the support of the organizational performance strategy – that must be developed, organized, managed, analyzed, delivered, and shared. And the people with responsibility for this management and service delivery function are strategic knowledge professionals.

It will be an honor to cast my vote in what is arguably the most important decision of my professional life. It will also be a deeply humbling experience, because in voting in this election I have the opportunity to be part of moving my and my colleagues’ professional work into a position of influence it has never known before. In both the larger professional world of KM/knowledge services and in society at large, we strategic knowledge professionals will now be perceived and accepted as the knowledge thought leaders we are. Now we will be recognized – at long last – for what we do well. It is a privilege to vote in this election.

Strategic Knowledge - Leading the Knowledge Revolution

SLA’s Alignment Success Provides the Opportunity of a Lifetime for Knowledge Workers

During the centennial year of the Special Libraries Association, I was honored on several occasions to be asked to speak about the growth and history of SLA. This topic was the subject of SLA at 100: From Working with Knowledge to Building the Knowledge Culture, the association's commemorative history which I was kindly invited to write. The book was published in January, 2009.

As with the book, it seemed important for those presentations to connect SLA's 100-year history with what would be expected of specialized librarianship in the future. Both in the book and in the presentations, one of the points I found myself making related to how close – as an association of professional knowledge workers – SLA came to taking a leadership position only to step back when confronted with the challenges the proposed change would require. Indeed, it was sometimes quite disheartening to research a topic and learn how people so talented and so smart – when they really needed to exercise their leadership – were not able to do so.

I’m put in mind of these several situations, what I’ve come to think of as SLA’s missed opportunities, as we engage in our discussions about the name of the association. I can’t help but wonder if once again we are going to not recognize a very special opportunity that is right in front of us.

So here a few thoughts from a colleague who has been a member of the association for nearly forty years, loving every minute of it and extremely proud and honored to be part of what I’ve always referred to as the most prestigious professional association of knowledge workers in the world. Perhaps these thoughts will be helpful as we think about the significance of SLA's Alignment Project and its impact on our future.

In my work as a management consultant specializing in KM, knowledge services, and the development of the organizational knowledge culture, one of the most valuable goals we seek with our clients is the achievement of organizational effectiveness. Indeed, it’s not all about vision, mission, and values, for in the management community we long ago learned that there is more to it than dealing with the vision-mission-values framework. We must use the organizational vision, mission, and values to move the organization forward.

But what does an organization move forward to?

It’s organizational effectiveness, a phrase that represents a relatively new way of thinking about organizational success. Organizational effectiveness builds on the vision-mission-values construct and incorporates what we used to refer to as organizational development, but it is more, too. Now the emphasis is on what we are going to achieve, whether the organization is going to be effective in its dealings with customers, suppliers, workers, leadership staff, indeed, with anyone affiliated in any way with the organization.

And in SLA’s centenary year – as we also observe the centenary of the birth of Peter Drucker, coming up on November 19 (and also written about here, on October 29) – it seems only appropriate to think in terms of organizational effectiveness. Since Mr. Drucker helped us come to terms with the importance of effectiveness, this is a good time to think about how SLA can be more effective as an organization.

We know why the organization exists. We know that SLA is an organization created – in terms of our own vision, mission, and values – to provide education, networking, and advocacy for its members. What we also know – thanks to the excellent and so carefully planned work of the Alignment Project – is that we have a long way to go before we can say that we are effective in doing these things. We’ve tried on many occasions, of course, to move in the direction of organizational effectiveness (even when we weren’t calling it that) and some have been very successful (I’m naturally very proud of the efforts made especially since 1990, with activities like the work of The PREPS Commission and the publication of Competencies for Special Librarians of the 21st Century, possibly the most important publication the association has ever produced).

But we’re not there yet. We’ve not succeeded yet.

I think we’ll succeed when we recognize that we – as members of this association – have the opportunity to go further. Indeed, at this moment we have – if I may be so bold – the opportunity to lead a revolution in the world of knowledge, knowledge management, and knowledge services. Out in the larger world today, there is a new focus on knowledge; we see it in business, in the academy, in research, in the humanities, in government, in the sciences, and just about anywhere else specialist librarians are employed. Indeed, throughout society at large – both locally and globally – we are seeing an important new attention to the value of strategic knowledge and the management of strategic knowledge assets in the success of just about every organization. Equally important, it is an attention that is being recognized as an important and valued element in the management of organizations, of any type of organization.

And who knows more about the management and use of knowledge assets than us? Through our expertise in knowledge development and knowledge sharing – what we like to call KD/KS – we now have the opportunity to take the new focus on strategic knowledge forward, to bring about a revolution in how people think about knowledge and about the role of strategic knowledge in the workplace, and we are the very people who can lead them there. We can connect strategic knowledge to organizational effectiveness.

It’s a role we’ve been thinking about for a long time, from the days when we chose “putting knowledge to work” as the association’s tagline in 1916, all the way up to 1997 when President Judith Field pointed out that we – as leaders in our field – were positioned to transition from a library and information focused profession to one in which attention to knowledge would bring success. “The information age,” Field said in 1997, “has matured and we are seeing the rebirth of our profession and of our association.” Even as early as 1997, we could see that it was time for the association to take the logical next step, to “focus on what we must do to adapt to the knowledge culture…”

Well of course.

And now – 12 years later – the Alignment Project has given us the research, the background, and the authority of evidence-based study to establish our effectiveness. We will begin with our name, and with our new name and our new “game” we will go even further, ever upward and onward. We can no longer be the librarians of the past. We must now be the knowledge thought leaders – the strategic knowledge professionals – of the future. We will build on our past, of course, and we will combine our finest and most valuable attributes as librarians with the strengths and competencies of others who aspire to join us.

And it will be in doing this – in all of us coming together and combining the best of what we do – that we will lead society’s knowledge revolution.

What a grand and glorious future we will have! Let’s not let it slip away from us. We’re too good at what we do to slide, once again, into the background.

Our entire society is moving into a magnificent new world of strategic knowledge. Let’s be its leaders.

[SLA at 100: From Putting Knowledge to Work to Building the Knowledge Culture is available through SLA. Draft versions of the sections relating specifically to SLA's future – the two concluding chapters and the Epilogue – can be found at "The Knowledge Culture" at SMRShare, our company’s knowledge capture site. The text of the presentation on the history of SLA is at "SLA at 100," also at SMRShare.]

Learning & Connecting: 3 Tips for Using Social Media Networking

SMR International's Spot-On Seminars continued on Friday, November 6 with the topic "Learning & Connecting: 3 Tips for Using Social Media Networking" an online conversation with Dale Stanley, Cindy Hill, and Guy St. Clair.

Dale facilitated the discussion, beginning with an overview of SMR's Spot-On Seminars, conversations designed to provide colleagues the opportunity to communicate, share, and converse on topics most germane and relevant to information and knowledge professionals. He set the context for the discussion with a few questions:

• Why all the buzz about social networking?
• How do managers with responsibility for strategic knowledge management and service delivery handle the "tools vs. toys" controversy?
• How can knowledge services professionals enhance the learning and collaboration experiences of their colleagues using social networking tools?

Guy spoke about the concept of knowledge services, and how knowledge services contributes to the effectiveness and success of the larger organization. In merging information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning, knowledge services enables strengthened knowledge asset management and accelerated innovation and takes advantage of the knowledge development/knowledge sharing (KD/KS) process. Not surprisingly, social media networking is ideal for connecting people as they seek to share what they've learned and/or developed.

Cindy referred to the five techniques for using social media identified by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff in Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies (listening, talking, energizing, supporting, and embracing - discussed in a previous post). Building on Cindy's comments, Guy offered the first tip for the seminar. As Guy describes it, the biggest challenge in learning and connecting with social media networking is to recognize that different media are required by different populations, with learning styles, generational interests and differences, and value-driven purpose all coming into play as people think about learning what they need to know. So Guy's suggestion is that in attempting to set up a framework for learning and connecting, the strategic knowledge professional must - returning to Li and Bernoff - listen carefully to what each of these different populations requires.

Cindy's tip for learning and connecting suggested three practical steps for moving social networking media forward in the workplace:

1. engage with people in the ways they're already engaging
2. explore through manageable pilot experiments
3. provide multimedia experiences

For each of these, information and knowledge services professionals can look around and identify examples at hand, as when colleagues engage successfully in web-based conference calls (with the current
meeting presenting an immediate example), using total learning products, or holding meetings or learning sessions in virtual worlds.

Dale's tip had to do with how we implement the use of social networking media, and he too had a three-part approach: partnering, planning, and publicizing. He pointed out that when implementing social networking tools, new relationships occur, particularly in terms of subject matter experts and librarians coming together with IT specialists to achieve a goal. Dale recommends considering such a relationship a "partnership," moving beyond the provider/consumer model.

As for planning, the knowledge professional's primary responsibility is to clarify outcomes and deliverables, It's very easy to be swayed by the "coolness" of a new tool, but everybody involved - the knowledge professional, the planning team, the partners, and the audience - all have to see the effort in terms of the desired effect. Publicizing - including training and rollout - is too often left as an afterthought and not given serious attention until too late in the life of the project. Dale pointed out how it is only natural to think of social media applications as intuitive and easy to use, expected to just spread virally throughout the organization. In fact, making such assumptions can be a mistake, and the best way to ensure sufficient uptake by users is to address the existing - and the desired - knowledge sharing culture of the organization and seek ways to take advantage of and/or change the culture so that social media networking can become part of the culture.

Participants in the seminar continued the discussion, with comments posted in the chat as well as shared verbally. Cindy commented that the session itself is a good example of how social media networking can be used, with several thoughts and responses shared at the same time. Attendees discussed how some research is beginning to show that social media is being embraced by much wider populations than previously thought, with the idea that social tools are the domain of younger generations now being disproved to some extent (the average age of Twitter users is much older than most people expect). The group also discussed the idea of pilots, with consideration being given to perhaps selecting different pilot programs for different populations.

Another comment from the group had to do with the seemingly large number of social networking tools available, and how people in different workplace settings choose what to work with and what to leave alone. Once participant lamented the fact that there are not more aggregation tools for all the different media available, and expressed the concern of many managers that too many tools and applications might impede workflow rather than improve it. Finally, it was agreed that there is no "final" choosing point with respect to social tools. Social media networking and the tools we use are continually evolving, and at some point we just have to make a choice - "put a stake in the ground," as one attendee put it.

Slides used in the Spot-On Seminar are at SMRShare.

The next SMR  is tentatively scheduled for Friday, December 11, 2009 at 4:00 PM ET. Contact smrknowledge@gmail.com to be added to the mailing list, or check for a meeting notice on LinkedIn at the SMR International Spot-On Seminar Discussion Group and on Twitter (check #SMRSpotOn).

Strategic Knowledge - What's Being Taught

Nancy Gershenfeld at the UWiSchool is Putting it Together

In the latest e-Profile from SMR International, Marcie Stone interviews Nancy Gershenfeld, Senior Lecturer at The Information School at the University of Washington.

Stone’s conversations with Gershenfeld bring to light several noteworthy connections between LIS graduate learning and the requirements of employers seeking to operate in our continually evolving knowledge culture.

And the connections are perhaps not all that surprising, when you review what’s going on at the iSchools (as they are popularly known). There’s a welcome and very strong philosophy behind the work of these institutions as they seek to learn more about the relationship between information, people, and technology and connect all they learn with the strategic learning “piece” of knowledge services. With the good work being done in the iSchools, the future for strategic knowledge professionals seems bright indeed.

And who better, over in the education wing, to lead the charge than an experienced veteran of the corporate world, a knowledge thought leader who now has a new role, helping to design the evolving curriculum for people who will be doing this work?

As it happens, Gershenfeld’s career – as Stone makes clear – has paralleled the emergence of the new corporate knowledge culture. Having worked as an information manager, an online database trainer, a litigation support database specialist, and as a consultant, Gershenfeld went to Microsoft. Working in the company’s Information Services operation, Gershenfeld was able to acquire particularly unique qualifications for teaching graduate students pursuing the MSLS and related degrees. In Stone’s essay, which with a nod to Stephen Sondheim is titled “Putting it Together – Creating New Leaders for the Knowledge Culture,” it becomes evident early on that Gershenfeld is a person who attracts people who want to learn about how to lead in the new knowledge environment. As for Gershenfeld, she delights in bringing them together with the expectations, requirements, and, yes, even the sometimes difficult challenges of the business world. Having made that point, she then emphasizes to her students the need for businesslike management in knowledge services.

At the same time, Gershenfeld is careful to recognize that all concepts do not transfer automatically from one management arena to another. Gershenfeld gives considerable attention – as Stone puts it – to ensuring that students understand the value of striking a workable balance. If knowledge services as an operational function is going to perform as a strategic partner with the many and varied other perspectives at play in the corporation, balance will be key. The benefit of maintaining this balance is found in the working relationships that come about between strategic knowledge professionals and the affiliates and colleagues who benefit from the services they provide. It is, as Stone points out, an important step in identifying and cultivating the next generation of leaders for the profession.

Read “Putting it Together – Creating New Leaders for the Knowledge Culture” here at the SMR Site. You can also see this e-Profile at SMRShare, SMR International’s knowledge capture site.

Strategic Knowledge - Learning Together

New Roles and New Responsibilities for Strategic Knowledge Workers

Regardless of what happens over the next month, knowledge services professionals have a new and commanding description of their work and their function in the workplace.

As noted here on October 18, strategic knowledge has entered the professional lexicon. As a phrase, strategic knowledge correctly depicts the thing we work with. It's not an artifact (a book or a journal article) or content (digitized or otherwise). It's not even a person or group of people who come together to do some work, such as a community of practice, a working group, or an individual’s interactions with a co-worker. Regardless of how we get it, strategic knowledge is what we develop and share, and when we undertake knowledge development and knowledge sharing – what we like to call “KD/KS” – our employing organizations succeed. It's knowledge, it's strategic, and we are the strategic knowledge professionals who make it work.

But what about you? Do you have a clear understanding of your roles and responsibilities as a strategic knowledge professional? Do you know what your organization expects of you (and your information center) for developing, managing, and sharing your company’s most valuable knowledge assets?

Here’s your chance to find out. You’ve heard all the questions… Or you’ve asked them yourself: “What is strategic knowledge?” “Why should I learn more about it?” “What’s the pay-off for me?”

Now we have the answers for you.

In January, just before SLA’s Leadership Summit in St. Louis MO, SLA’s Click U and SMR International are continuing their strategic alliance by presenting two courses aimed at taking the mystery out of working with KM, knowledge services, and participating in the knowledge culture. As we transition to our critical new roles and new responsibilities as strategic knowledge professionals, we want to keep up, to develop new competencies and skills on the foundations of our already well-developed professionalism.

That’s what these courses are all about. They have been specially chosen and designed to bring KM and knowledge services to specialist librarians who cannot travel to SLA’s Annual Conference (or who – during the busy conference week – just can’t find the time to get involved in professional development activities).

The courses are Fundamentals of Knowledge Management and Knowledge Services, offered on Tuesday 26 January 2010 from 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM CT and The Knowledge Audit, offered on Wednesday 27 January 2010, also from 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM CT. Both courses will be taught at the St. Louis Station Marriott Hotel in St. Louis MO (click on the titles for more information and registration information).

In these courses, you’ll work with Guy St. Clair, Cindy Hill, and Dale Stanley as they lead you through KM/knowledge services concepts and show you how to undertake an inventory of your organization’s intellectual infrastructure. These are in-person, face-to-face courses, team taught by three recognized strategic knowledge specialists, people you already know (you’ve probably participated with them in SMR International’s Spot-On Seminars, or had another course with them). Here’s your chance to work directly with Cindy and Dale and Guy, who will give you the tools you need to succeed as a strategic knowledge professional. With what you learn, you’ll be able to go back to your workplace and collaborate with your management to build a knowledge strategy that matches the company’s business strategy. It’s a win-win situation for you.

This is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. Don’t pass it up. Sign up now and position yourself and your knowledge services workplace for enterprise-wide success. Whether you have management and service-delivery responsibility for a specialized library, an information center, a records and information management department, corporate archives, or any other knowledge-focused operation, these courses will provide you with what you need to guarantee the effectiveness of your work.