What basic competence does a Knowledge Manager need?
If Knowledge Management is “all about people”, then the best skills for a knowledge manager are people skills.
I was reading a Linked-in discussion recently on the skills and qualifications (other than KM skills) that a Knowledge Manager should have.
- Some people said “Library and information skills”
- Some people said “Data analytics”
- Some said “KCS” (which is perfectly valid for those organisations looking at developing knowledge bases focused on contact centers and customer self-help)
It got me thinking, again, about this topic, and I came back to the following thought:
“If KM is “all about people”, then the best skills for a knowledge manager are people skills; specifically the skills of change management, and the skills of facilitation.
If KM were “all about documents” then library skills might be top of your list, but I don’t think I have ever heard anyone claim that “KM is all about documents”. And if there were a discipline that was “all about documents” it would be document management.
There is a similar argument with data. KM is not “all about data”
Therefore, if I were setting up a new KM team to introduce KM into an organisation, then the first skills I would provide to all of them would be change management and facilitation skills (as I argue here in a post entitled “The first thing a new KM team needs to learn”).
After giving everyone a basic grounding, I would make sure that the following skills were on the team somewhere, but are not necessary for everyone on the team;
- Library and information management skills, to deal with that component of Knowledge (probably a minority component) that is explicit and codified into documents;
- Technology skills, to understand the tools for connecting people, synthesizing knowledge and finding stored knowledge (and that is both finding the documents and the people);
- Skills related to your own organisation (legal skills if you are a legal firm, sales skills if you are a sales organisation, engineering skills if you are an engineering contractor).
In addition the whole team needs training in the concepts, techniques and strategies of KM implementation, and that’s where a specialist dedicated KM training provider comes in.
Shared by: Nick Milton
March 12, 2019
Tags: Archive
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