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The chief knowledge officer (CKO) and the chief
learning officer (CLO) are the hottest new portfolios in IT circles
that are suddenly evincing a lot of interest. Who is a CKO / CLO,
and why is his significance now being realised in the high-tech
industry? While a CKO is in charge of structuring a company's store
of technical and business knowledge and makes it accessible to the
employees, a CLO is the top executive responsible for organisational
learning. These are people in charge of the intellectual capital
of a company and their importance stems from the fact that they
ensure a corporate culture that is learning and growing. The CKO
leverages on knowledge and the CLO on learning in the organisation,
to meet a singular aim-business objectives.
The functionalities of both are almost similar
most of the time, so if an organisation creates a post for a CKO,
appointing a CLO is not considered a norm. One of their primary
objectives is to tap on the intellectual (knowledge) resources and
align it with the vision and business goals of the organisation.
R Ramkumar, the CKO of Cognizant Technology Solutions, elaborates
on the profile of a CKO: "A CKO must be a leader who understands
the organisation's strategies, integrates them with business processes
and technologies and brings about a knowledge-sharing environment.
He must be a change agent, constantly selling the value of knowledge
and be willing to participate in all organisational programmes.
Ideally, a CKO should be like a senior manager who is on back-slapping
terms with the business and processes of the organisation, but never
a new hire." The skill sets of a CKO can be outlined as follows:
Business management, process management, project and programme management,
information technology and communications. Ramkumar points out that
it is necessary for a CKO to have a good understanding of technology
to be able to establish content repositories and collaboration,
set-up communities of practice and process management. He should
have a "global" mindset but be able to address local needs,
build relationships and motivate employees and partners to achieve
their potential.
The need factor
Why is it necessary to appoint a CKO? Knowledge-sharing
is critical in a knowledge-based industry, and consequently the
need to have a dedicated knowledge management team headed by a CKO.
"A CKO is a catalyst for knowledge-sharing. He facilitates
identifying, capturing, evaluating, sharing, leveraging and creating
new enterprise knowledge assets-both explicit and tacit. Through
this process he also ensures a closed-loop learning system in the
organisation," adds Ramkumar. He however reminds that it is
not necessary for all organisations to employ a CKO. Companies where
knowledge is a "product" should employ a CKO, where he
is the owner of the knowledge process and infrastructure, which
he leverages to increase the value of the organisation. In organisations
that have KM as the core of their business, the functions of a CKO
will be rendered redundant as knowledge-sharing is already in place.
Furthermore, in organisations that are characterised by stringent
"hierarchical structures" and believe in a "command
and control" type of management, the role of a CKO is always
suspect as he champions for an open, sharing culture.
The CKO should be able to architect the knowledge
environment; integrate knowledge management; and improve innovation.
Although the CKO is not the one-point change-agent for transforming
the culture of the organisation, he is the driver of cultural change
management related to knowledge-sharing. Yet another key function
of the CKO is preventing knowledge loss: "Attrition in employees
or customers leads to a high degree of loss of knowledge. The CKO,
through systems and processes, ensures minimal loss of knowledge
during attrition," says Ramkumar. The CKO, points out Ramkumar,
also helps create knowledge metrics that are in consonance with
the strategic goals and objectives of the organisation. He is also
responsible for publishing the intellectual balance sheet to the
executive management.
The learning focus
"IT organisations thrive only when individuals
and teams learn, unlearn and learn. Without a focused effort, which
makes a team accountable to make it happen, the learning activity
will not happen effectively," says Cyprian D'Souza, CEO of
Kanbay India who also happens to be the global people care chief
and the CLO of the organisation. The CLO, he states, is responsible
for the following functions in an organisation: creating a learning
culture; building competency keeping in mind business, individual
and organisational needs; establish learning infrastructure, systems
and processes; inculcate standards and practices for all aspects
of learning process; and integrate effectiveness assessments. It
is necessary for the CLO to have knowledge of the organisation's
business, he should be familiar with core technologies, possess
a passion for learning processes and should have some experience
in learning delivery modes.
Outsourcing debate
While CKOs and CLOs hold key positions in major
global organisations, in India the trend is yet to catch on. At
Kale Consultants there has been ongoing debate for the last three
to five years on KM and the need to have a CKO. Vinayak Kamath,
vice president of HR at Kale Consultants agrees that the role expectations
of a CKO and a CLO overlap. But then, in the era of outsourced expertise,
is there a need for such high profile executives in an organisation?
Kamath acknowledges that such expertise should be outsourced to
a consulting firm with management mandate for specific projects.
Kalpana Jaishankar, director of human resources with Geometric Software
Solutions argues that the CLO should be from within the organisation.
"A CLO needs to be a senior person from a technical background
who has been with the organisation for a considerable period of
time and understands it well. He should be like a mentor,"
states Jaishankar. According to Shubho Kundu, senior general manager
of human resources, LG Soft India, companies typically tend to outsource
only non-critical functions. And therefore, if an organisation felt
that a CLO is required, it would be a mission-critical need for
them and outsourcing this function would not arise.
The issue is that learning is often seen as a
set of training programme and this evidently gives rise to the debate
about outsourcing it. "Most of the learning, in fact, happens
in everyday life in executing one's responsibility. The job of a
learning team is to put in place a set of integrated processes that
makes learning happen-formally and informally; in team and individual
setting; physically and virtually," says D'Souza. The right
focus, consequently, has to be on learning and not training. In
training, the responsibility for success lies with the trainer,
while in learning it is the learner who is responsible. Also, specific
delivery /implementation aspects of learning activities can be outsourced,
but the task of creating the culture, vision and strategy needs
to be handled internally for greater ownership and integration.
But will the training department emerge as a strong
and separate entity instead of being just a sub-function of the
HR department? Says Kundu, "Even though the training department
exists as a part of the HR department, it typically functions independently
and indirectly interacts with the line business. Formally recognising
that into a training and or/ learning department is the next logical
step." D'Souza rationalises that organisations choose to structure
various activities differently to enable more effective management
of information, accountability, decision-making, etc. The important
thing is to see what role "learning" plays in the organisation,
how best to structure it to ensure it is able to fulfill the desired
role and give the results. If it is integrated in the HR function
there are some distinct advantages as the learning activity needs
to be integrated and seen as part of overall people development
and "caring" activity. In most organisations HR is charged
with this responsibility.
A change manager of new times, a CKO/CLO can however
add value to only that organisation that sees learning as critical
to business strategy, and recognises that there is a collective
intelligence throughout the organisation.
sudipta@ expresscomputeronline.com
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