Chief knowledge officer: The climax to your career?

Exploiting the informated [sic] environment means opening the information base of the organization to members at every level, assuring that each has the knowledge, skills, and authority to engage with the information.

S. Zuboff, "The Emperor's New Workplace," Scientific American (1995)

Correctly selecting an occupation today is anything but an exact science. In fact, it is said that as many as 98 percent of people are in the wrong occupation.1 Since the U.S. Department of Commerce has identified some 40,000 occupational choices, there is certainly considerable opportunity to make the wrong choice. Many records managers, in fact, will admit that they either "fell" into records management or were "pushed" into it.

Yet once in the records management field, however, and finding it suitable to our personality, values, skills, and interests-what career goal(s) might the professional records manager adopt? What might the pinnacle of a career in records or information management be? What is the position that any effective and successful records manager might reasonably desire and work toward over the years? For an attorney, this might be appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court; for a physician, it might be being named chief of staff at a nationally known hospital. For a records manager, the answer might be "Chief Information Officer." Some evidence for this choice is suggested by a useful publication in the field.

The Job Descriptions guideline issued by ARMA International puts the CIO at the top of the current information management hierarchy: [the CIO] "has organization-wide responsibility for the use and management of information, technology, and administrative services."2 Yet if CIOs are really in charge of all information resources, not merely computers, then how much do they really know about the disciplines of records management, archives management, and corporate librarianship-all of which are unquestionably centers of information resources management? Despite the top honor held by the CIO position in the Job Descriptions guideline, how many records and information managers report to a Chief Information Officer in their organization rather than to a lower and more traditional level, such as the head of administrative services? More important, perhaps, how many records managers have themselves achieved the CIO rank? I know of none as yet.

WOES OF CIOS

As I have discussed, the CIO concept in the records management context elsewhere,3 it need only be stressed for our purposes here that the CIO position has faced many hardships in defining its role and in gaining acceptance by peers in senior management ranks at larger organizations. Let us be content with a short list of problems plaguing CIOs:

Many larger organizations forgo the services of a CIO-or drop the use of one after an initial hire.

CIOs are penned in, or shackled, by flimsy assumptions; e.g., all information of value is of internal origin and resides on the organization's computers; tools are more important than tasks, etc.

CIOs assume that managers at upper levels value and are active users of computing and formal information systems when, in fact, there is scant evidence to support this belief.

The established need for CIOs to understand business processes and to be dynamically articulate in "selling" greater use of technology has not squared with the reality that technically oriented people rarely have either of these abilities.

The inability of many CIOs to achieve "business alignment" of IS with the organization's functions continues as a significant problem.4

The increasing uncertainty of the CIO position in corporate America may have to do, in part, with its emphasis on technology rather than content, on electronic storage and distribution rather than the ways in which information is actually needed and used, and on the mechanical rather than the human factors and psychological aspects of information processing and application.

The widespread-virtually epidemic-use of computing, networks, and telecommunication equipment in offices-the "informating," as Zuboff puts it, of all functions in the organization-means that offices which create and increasingly manage information may no longer see computing as a major issue. Rather, information technology is becoming a given, something increasingly handled at the local level, a workplace utility which needs little oversight or encouragement from above (i.e., the CIO). It is also beginning to seem clear that information systems (IS) units, a significant portion of the CIO's domain, are not so missioncentral after all and that all or part of them can be downsized and and even outsourced. In a sense, then, the CIO continues to promote technology while many in the organization have moved on to higher-order issues, issues such as the optimization of content, knowledge resources within the organization.

THE EMERGENCE OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

If there is, as many suggest, a hierarchy in which information is higher than data, knowledge is higher than information, and wisdom is at the top, then it may well be time for knowledge to emerge as a significant corporate asset. A widely-read and influential assessment of the emergence of the Knowledge Economy or Learning Society was provided by Peter F. Drucker in his Post-Capitalist Society (1993).5 Here, Drucker shows that from the technical skills of craftsmen evolved technology, which in turn encouraged the capitalism and production focus that underlay the development of the Industrial Revolution. This momentum of the Industrial Revolution reduced the status of craftspeople and their knowledge and elevated the status of productivity via technology.6 According to Drucker, we have entered a new period in which the centerpiece of enterprise is the know-how (knowledge) of an organization's workers rather than the tools of production. (Should CIOs be worried?) While managers were once responsible for the work of subordinates, the role of managers today is more nearly that of seeing that knowledge is acquired, developed, and applied at optimal levels by what Drucker terms the organization's "knowledge workers."

The exponents of Knowledge Management see information as the building blocks of knowledge, just as data are the building blocks of information. Knowledge has become intellectual capital, a manageable resource. The collective knowledge of an organization is its intellectual capital. It resides-or is inherentin its employees at all levels. Knowledge resides primarily, then, not in computers but in people whose experience, insights, skills, and competencies are the organization's most valuable resource. So, knowledge is a higher order commodity than technology, which simply provides tools to help the employees and the organization to develop and apply its management capital.

Like information, knowledge is intangible, dynamic, and difficult to measure, but without it no organization can survive:

In today's service-oriented, information-intensive economy, intellectual capital is a critical resource that can help companies forge sustainable, renewable, competitive advantages. Like financial capital, it must be accumulated, cultivated, and managed in an active, thoughtful way. But unlike financial capital, it is routinely squandered by even the most competent [organizations] .7

What are the sources of knowledge capital in organizations? They include: training (formal and informal), academic degree programs, workshops/seminars, intelligence gathered about one's industry and competition, information sourcessuch as the Internet and World Wide Web-which can be constantly scoured for ideas on better ways to do things, in-house databases (or data warehouses) of past activities and accomplishments made widely available to employees, and forms of intra-organizational electronic communication and groupware (e.g., Lotus Notes) for effective sharing of information gathered and lessons learned. Included are libraries, records centers and archival collections.

While it may be difficult to create metrics for an elusive resource called "knowledge," anyone can understand that the enhanced expertise derived from the use of these "learning" resources improves the bottom line or, in the not-for-profit areas, the quality and cost-effectiveness of services rendered. The impact on areas such as creativity, new product development, and marketing would be significant.

Records managers might want to consider the differences between training/educational opportunities and institutional repositories of knowledge. The former can be brought to the learner, are somewhat interactive, and can be tailored or packaged for the group of consumers. The latter, such as records centers and archives, are instrumental; that is they have the potential for use but will probably need greater value addition to make them both desirable and effective. Such value addition activities might include deeper-and computer assisted-indexing of documents, the ability to apply powerful software to create trend charts and statistical reports from records which may themselves not be graphically founded or statistically focused. For the records manager or the archivist, this may mean aggressively developing new services, services well beyond the traditionaland passive-reactive-custodial and preservational functions.

ENTER THE CHIEF KNOWLEDGE OFFICER

While there may be no more than twenty to thirty Chief Knowledge Officers (CKO) as yet in the U.S., searches for persons to fill the position of CKO or Chief Learning Officer (CLO) are on the rise at executive recruitment firms. While job descriptions for CKOs may vary widely from one company to another, they have in common a philosophy different from those for CIOs. While the CIO, for example, "is typically interested in data, the chief knowledge officer ... must identify what corporate knowledge needs to [be] retained and built on."8 The CIO is focused more on the "how" of information distribution (technology) while CKOs emphasize the "what" (content). Yet the CKO must understand the use of technology in order to combine content and carriage effectively.

While the domain of the CKOknowledge-appears to be at a level higher, or more inclusive, than that of the CIO-data and informationit is unclear as yet what the relationships-or competition-between these two managers will be like. For example, the CKO reports to the CIO in some cases while the CIO is a subordinate to the CKO in others. CIOs in larger organizations typically make between $250,000 and $400,000, but the salaries for CKOs extend from the high end of the CIO range upward to $1,000,000.9

For the CKO position, some common descriptive characteristics are emerging:

The CKO is a staff rather than a line position, often without support staff.

CKOs are to be the organization's primary advocate for learning and knowledge development.

The CKO will design and have implemented the organization's knowledge infrastructure, including training, knowledge bases, libraries, data warehouses, research groups, and relationships with external academic organizations.

The CKO will be the liaison between the organization and external suppliers of knowledge; e.g., consultants, publishers, information providers, database vendors, and the like.

This position will help the organization find ways to "milk" organizational information resources, including "documents in libraries and file cabinets," so that they yield the maximum useable knowledge.10

The CKO will insure that computer systems and networks are designed for effective round-the-clock use by employees regardless of location and will see that materials put into the organization's systems are organized, edited, and indexed for maximum usefulness.

The CKO will work to break down the natural reluctance to share information within what were once competitive units in the organization and will foster an environment in which collaboration and teaming can thrive.

Overall, the CKO's focus is on developing the organization's "knowhow," or its intellectual assets. This scope includes managing knowledge currently held, creating new knowledge, accessing knowledge within and external to the organization, representing knowledge through various employee-accessible media (e.g., videotapes, expert-knowledge software, virtual training, satellitebased distance education), and seeing as well that knowledge is transferred all around the organization so that one unit can benefit from the knowledge of another.ll

DROPPING A FEW NAMES

CKO's have been hired at CocaCola, Young and Rubicam, Burson Marseteller, Canadian Imperial Bank, Dow Chemical, Xerox, Hoffman-LaRoche, McKinsey and Co., GE Lighting, Coopers and Lybrand, and elsewhere. The CKO most in the news may be Ellen Knapp at Coopers and Lybrand. Knapp was made CKO in April, 1996. She had been a vice chair for technology, a role in which she had developed strategy for internal technology and oversaw deployment of Lotus Notes for use among 170,000 staffers on an international basis, development of Internet sites, and the company's intranet. It was believed that Knapp, who never was a CIO, could make the jump from infrastructure to content, where a professional services firm must stress its knowledge base in order to remain competitive.l2 Knapp, who serves on the firm's Management Committee and its Board of Partners, is now in a role which "encompasses all aspects of the Firm's technology, learning, and education, and market analysis functions.... [Knapp] is responsible for identifying and leveraging knowledge assets that will differentiate Coopers and Lybrand."13

Unlike Knapp, Pat Fortune of Monsanto Corp. in St. Louis, Missouri, does not have the title of CKO; yet, his work is very similar to hers. Fortune is responsible for developing an internal knowledge architecture which includes services such as libraries and an internal news network. His efforts are "less on details and implementation [than] on issues and opportunities with respect to knowledge management across the company."14 Fortune understands that while computers are useful at collecting and storing information, human intellect is still required to synthesize it and gain understanding from it. Human agency is still required to turn infoglut into usable knowledge.lb

Nicholas Rudd is the CKO at Wunderman Cato Johnson, a subsidiary of Young & Rubicam, where he was Y & R's first CIO. He won his technology spurs by creating a world-wide WAN so that 10,000 people in 65 countries could communicate and hold videoconferencing sessions. As with other CKOs, Rudd has no budget, no staff, and a vague job description. His essential function, however, is not that of building staff-glutted empires but of creating new business through leveraging knowledge within the organization. The ability of Y & R employees around the world to brainstorm together about the needs of a particular client is a good example of what Rudd sees as the CKO's function.16

CONCLUSION

It would be difficult to say what the fate of the CKO will be over the long term. It makes some sense to suggest that if the CKO is able to take what is increasingly commonplace technology and optimally utilize it to create disseminate, and apply knowledge, CKOs may overtake CIOs in number and stature. Or the CKO role may prove to be complementary to that of the CIO, and cooperation rather than competition may characterize their relationship. The success or failure of the CKO, like that of the CIO, will in larger measure rest on the level of confidence the CEO has in the incumbent. Also, where CEOs have often had difficulty in seeing how the efforts of the CIO positively affect the bottom line, the CEO may be better able to appreciate a CKO's understanding of business functions as well as the CKO's emphasis on and ability to improve the knowledge and learning base of the organization. (My money is on the CKO, by the way.) On the other hand, what has often happened to the CIO could happen to the CKO: employees may eventually become so adept at finding and applying knowledge that the CKO might be put out of business.

What might the relationship of the records manager be with a CKO compared to that with a CIO? Records managers today are very concerned about keeping up with the uses of information technology, the CIO's domain. Well and good. At the same time, however, it would be helpful to consider how records management-or whatever we choose to call the discipline in the future-can find, as in the CKO mandate, ways to extract additional knowledge from records and documents, how to add value to the information being created, received, and disseminated by the organization. As information technologies continue to break down the artificial barriers among the information disciplines, it would be very helpful for records managers to begin dialogues with those in archives management and in the corporate library environment. There may well be a future in which the only surviving information professionals will be those willing to work with others in cognate disciplines toward common goals in information and knowledge services.

REFERENCES

1. E.g., Donald E. Seymour, The Key to Your Unknown Talent: A New Discovery About You! (Milwaukee, WI: Talent Discovery Press, 1996), jacket copy.

2. ARMA International, ARMA International Guidelines: Job Descriptions, 3rd ed. (Prairie Village, KS: ARMA International, 1991), p 7.

3 . J. Michael Pemberton, "Will the Real CIO Please Stand Up?" Records Management Quarterly, 26, iv (October 1992), 40-50; Jeffrey B. Romanczuk and J. Michael Pemberton, "The Chief Information Officer: Rise and Fall?" Records Management Quarterly, April 1997.

4. See Romanczuk and Pemberton; Henry Mintzberg, "The Manager's Job: Folklore and Fact," in Mintzberg on Management: Inside Our Strange World of Organizations (New York: Macmillan/Free Press, 1989), p. 14 passim; Sharon M. McKinnon and William J. Bruns, Jr., The Information Mosaic (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1992), p. 3 passim; Allan E. Alter, "Business Alignment's Dirty Little Secret," Computerworld, 30, xx (May 13, 1996), 37; Robert D. Savoia and John M. Jordan, " How IS Organizations Dropped the Ball: The Crisis of Expertise," Information Strategy: The Executive 's Journal, 13, I (Fall 1996), 17-21; "CIOs Still Feel Besieged," Inside Computerworld, August 14, 1995, p. 89.

5. New York: Harper Business, A Division of Harper Collins Publishers, 1993.

6. Drucker, pp. 43-45.

7. Christopher Gopal and Joseph Ganon, "Knowledge, Information, Learning, and the IS Manager," ... www.computerworld. com/search/AT-htm/9506 (June 19, 1995).

8. Marianne Kolbasuk McGee, "The Person in the Know," Informationweek, no. 581 (May 2, 1996), p. 94.

9. Laura B. Smith, "The Thinkers," PC Week, August 5, 1996, p. El.

10. Tom Davenport, "Coming Soon: The CKO," Informationweek, no. 491 (September 5, 1994), p. 95; also at: http://techweb.cmp. com/iw/509/cko.htm. 11. Gopal and Gagnon, pp. 3-4.

12. Smith, p. E4.

13. "Biography: Ellen M. Knapp," http://innovate.si.edu/chair/knappell.htm (December 13, 1996).

14. Smith, p. E4.

15. Smith, p. E4.

16. Smith, p. E4.

Copyright Association of Records Managers and Administrators Inc. Apr 1997
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