14 tasks for a Knowledge Manager

One in a series of 100 posts about KM roles and role descriptions, here are 14 tasks for a Knowledge Manager

Tumyra Byron, Knowledge Operations manager, USAF

Courtesy of Rob Dalton, and reproduced from this page on KM4Dev, here is his “Task list for a knowledge manager”. He originally wrote this list in 2010 for consideration by the U.S. Army at Fort Leavenworth, but these tasks are relevant for most organisations and are a good mix of strategic level awareness and culture work, and on-the-ground process facilitation. The links within the list were added by me.

1. Work with leadership to build a knowledge sharing environment and culture throughout the organization.
2. Improve situational awareness throughout the organization. 
3. Train our leaders on knowledge sharing and transfer techniques they can use with their personnel.
4.  Train and promote the use of online collaborative publishing throughout the organization. 
5. Train and promote the use of communities of practice and professional forums. 
6. Analyze excellence, when it is recognized through organizational award programs, and allow others to benefit from lessons learned from those who were recognized. 
7. Transform the traditional training process through the integration of social learning techniques when and where appropriate.
8. Integrate structured socialization into the fabric of our organization in order to build trust and increase communications between our organizational personnel.
9. Collaborate with the CIO to provide easy to use global online reach-forward and reach-back capabilities to access in near real time knowledge and experience 24/7 to our leaders and personnel when needed and where needed. 
10. Eliminate organizational continuity breaks caused through loss or turnover of personnel. 
11. Decrease the use of email internally throughout the organization when and where practical. 
12. Work with organizational security personnel to minimize security policy impact on knowledge transfer. 
13. Facilitate the identification of new knowledge and experience of value to management and other key personnel for further exploitation, validation and dissemination. 
14. Shorten the learning curve for new organization personnel by providing immediate online and offline access to relevant, knowledgeable and experienced subject matter experts and mentors. 
15. Decrease negative outcomes for first time real world contact experiences for our personnel.
16. Set up and operate an organization wide program that utilizes and exploits retiree knowledge and experience to the benefit of our organizational personnel and leaders. 
17. Work closely with organizational IT section to ensure availability to personnel of state-of-the-art knowledge transfer software tools. 
18. Train, set up and facilitate peer assists and virtual teams when required to either resolve organizational problems or assist the innovation process. 
19. Train, set up and facilitate After Action Reviews (AARs) when required in order to capture lessons learned for future use. 
20. Assist organizational IT personnel with training people how to use online search capability  more effectively to find knowledge or experience they need to resolve their issues or to innovate.