KM is its own function

From time-to-time I’ve heard KMers discuss where does KM fit in the organisational structure – which function should it be part of? My answer – it’s its own function. At least for now.

I’ve led KM under different functional headings – and I still find it works best on its own. Whichever heading you try to do KM under will colour it to its detriment.

Human Resources – There are really two flavours to HR: the ‘people processing’ side and the developmental side (L&D and culture, and sometimes internal comms is under here too). The people processing side we want to have done exceptionally well as a service to all employees and the business. It’s critically important this is done well and I find that most HR departments are so consumed by the complexities and sheer workload of doing all this that the development side can sometimes look like an afterthought. Yes, we in KM have common cause with the people processing side over processes such as joiners and leavers and people information (e.g. recording data such as their skills and experience which can be shared and used for KM) – but that is limited to being the owners of specific requirements. We may make stronger common cause with L&D, but here as well we find that L&D is focused on the learning of individuals where KM is focused on a shared capability. It’s also true that L&D is often so overburdened with ‘must do’ training (health and safety etc etc) that deep subject-matter knowledge learning is likely to get overlooked. There’s also a tendency to be more focused on ‘leadership’ development than job-related knowledge and skills. And on the culture side, it’s also often dominated by big themes such as D&I – – ‘knowledge culture’ may well not get a look in.

Marketing and communications – The outward, commercial focus is welcome. Plus these people understand some things about communications and content products. But, again, the agenda is about making and substantiating claims that recommend the business and its offerings to prospective customers – it’s tending more towards the sales end and KM tends more to the delivery end.

Sales and service – There are some great KM applications to be implemented in a sales function, but Sales is likely to exclusively sponsor only these applications, not those that apply in other areas of the business. Sales KM should be implemented by Sales and KM together, which is not the same thing as saying KM fits well under Sales.

Legal – if you can do document and records management, and other applications such as privacy of confidentiality, then that’s the KM you’ll do within a company legal function.

Operations – depends what you mean. If it’s entirely about today’s work today as in Ops depts that focus on resource allocation, then they may want some applications, but they wont sponsor KM as a whole. Conversely, an ops dept that is all about continuous improvement could be a good home in the long run.

IT – I need hardly tell anyone in KM what KM under IT looks like. They’ll never understand that you care more about the users and the stuff that flows in the pipes than the pipes themselves. But I can’t visit IT without saying that in my view, the company IT dept is the one department that, in my experience, does try to properly understand and improve the business. They have to – the tech is unforgiving if you’re not precise. I’ve always appreciated that side of IT and all the skilled people who make things work. Working with IT has always been great. Working in IT has never worked for my KM.

Finance – stick around and this too may happen one day.

The point is that each of these functional areas has their own work to do. And, whilst KM has a lot to do with and within each and all of them, the work that they each do just isn’t KM. Just as Finance doesn’t really do HR, HR doesn’t really do Sales. Only KM does KM.

So what is the drive to fit KM inside something else all about? It’s the pushback from the incumbent, established industrial economy against the emergent knowledge economy.

We, as KM, are here to break the industrial mould. We operate in a different way – more networked and less siloed. And there is a reason for that which holds in it the answer to why I say, at the top, that KM is its own function “At least for now“.

What I meant by that is, that, right now, our job as KM is to affect the operations, structures, processes, measures and cultures of our organisations to make them better for natural knowledge to naturally flourish and bear fruit. We’re working across the organisation as change agents and need that free rein. Maybe at some point the change will be so well embedded, or overtaken by something else, that KM as we know it will cease to have an identity, or may have morphed into something else. Most organisations need, I think, a Delivery Office, a Strategy Office, and a Change Office. We may end up there, fighting for identity once again, once our current work is done.