The debates continue about how to organize KM efforts within organizations. Virtual teams, dedicated resources, corporate level, grassroots, everyone has a viewpoint.
Lately I have seen more and more client groups moving to the virtual team model. Yesterday an esteemed colleague from a Fortune 50 company said they thought it was a sign of perceived value when an organization dedicates headcount to KM.
I have to say I disagree. That had been my way of thinking some time ago. Now I have come to think that might be detrimental to embedding KM behaviors within the culture. Yes, there might be a period of time where people are focused on a KM initiative, and there might be business unit or site KM leaders who have managing knowledge as part of their jobs. Full time resources would indicate that knowledge is managed by one group of people and perhaps not be the job of every individual.
I would rather see a revolving virtual team of people who can all learn the skills and hand-off the processes to new people on a yearly or bi-yearly basis. This would increase internal competency and yet not make it too easy for the organization to shrug off accountability for KM. Yes, there would be other challenges in this model, but I think the payoff might well be worth it. The world is changing, resources are at a premium and we must do what we can to change the behaviors and competencies of our groups to meet the new challenges.
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