It has been a while since I blogged but, as I noted before, you should never blog just for the sake of it; blog only when you have something to add to the conversation.
It has been a very busy three months and admittedly ‘demonstrating value’ can be exhausting, especially when you have to do it 24/7. But that’s just the economy we are operating in. Nevertheless, the past three months have amply demonstrated my views on the ever-changing role of knowledge management professionals and the fact that 2013 would be a challenging year.
Frankly, I am glad I took my own advice, otherwise 2013 would have been a confronting year of change … and more change. This year also reminded me of a comment made by a business executive a couple of years ago who noted that at the time they were looking for employees who were capable of ‘managing ambiguity’.
So far, 2013 has been a reminder of the importance of staying close to the business and its strategic, business development objectives and ensuring that the knowledge function today is working to provide for the future direction of the organisation. Anticipating needs to support future business development needs has been one of the hallmarks of the year and to achieve it one needs to be embedded with the business development teams and steering committees of the relevant practice areas.
In many instances, the knowledge function is in a unique, but often unrecognised, position to utilise its in-depth knowledge and accumulated understanding to help shape strategic direction by identifying trends and extrapolating future needs both within and outside the organisation. For this to happen, a knowledge professional must start to view the knowledge function not as a mere exercise in retrospective collation, organisation and re-delivery of knowledge (that’s last decade’s knowledge management style) but as a tool to understanding trends, predicting future developments and developing knowledge tools today for tomorrow’s needs in a fast-paced global business environment.
Achieving a forward-looking, predictive knowledge management style may just be the biggest challenge knowledge professionals will face in 2014.
The Vue Post 