I am a Knowledge Manager but I do not manage knowledge

When I tell people 'I am a knowledge manager', 8 out of 10 ask me 'oh, so you manage knowledge?’ Well, from the sound of a knowledge manager it may seem like it but it really is not. It could take hours or perhaps days to explain what I manage. But in the few words that this blog and your attention span allows, you can say, I help organisations manage knowledge.

How?

Let's assume every organisation is a bank and its employees are the Fixed Deposits and various Funds. These fixed deposits, on their own, have all the innovative ways to grow (by socializing, networking, learning and sharing). They always have the voracious greed to add as much knowledge value to themselves. In the most current scenario, they blog, socialize in cafes or different forums or use twitter/ facebook for that urge to share and gain.

Their networking and sharing skills are limited. Imagine if the bank does not bother about making the success of one fund work for another. Each one has to struggle for a new way and reinvent the wheel.

These deposits and funds remain volatile. They benefit the bank only as long as they are within the bank. So imagine what the bank lets go of every time a deposit or fund walks away. And imagine how many success stories and growth plans the bank says goodbye to each year.

So now comes the knowledge manager (and my example fails me as I can’t find the right representation of this knowledge manager in a bank scenario). Nevertheless, this knowledge manager helps extract, capture, document and disseminate all that information and knowledge that is typically lost. The knowledge manager will liaise with people and ensure they capture their minds through one way or another. They will promote networking and the ideas that are born from it and importantly secure those ideas and make sure as many people are aware of it. The knowledge manager helps people find the space to look for information or other people.

To summarise, the knowledge manager builds the knowledge park for an organisation while encouraging people to play on it.