What is a Knowledge Productivity Office?
A Knowledge Productivity Office (KPO) or a Knowledge Management Office (KMO) is responsible for defining, designing, implementing and otherwise managing the organisation’s knowledge management system in a holistic, prioritised and financially prudent way and in compliance with the CIO’s (or equivalent) policy and broader standards of good or mandated business practice to enable and support the processes and core business of the organisation and the organisation’s people to add value to that core business.
Key Features
A knowledge productivity office has these features:
- People. It contains a group of people who support all of the organisation’s knowledge production and management activities.
- Skills. These people would have various skills ranging from those that have an ability to see and understand how the organisation’s data and information come together to provide valuable knowledge for the organisation. These sorts of people are what we call 'multi-dimensional' thinkers … people who can see and understand things from various angles, particularly a strategic perspective, and learn from specific events or activities to apply it in a generic context so that the organisation can learn. It also contains other people who can implement all the initiatives. These people are the 'doers' … the ones that get on with the job and make things happen. You need both in any sort of KPO/KMO.
- Responsibility. We have defined the responsibilities earlier, but it is worth repeating.'The KPO is responsible for defining, designing, implementing and otherwise managing the organisation’s knowledge management system in a holistic, prioritised and financially prudent way and in compliance with the CIO’s (or equivalent) policy and broader standards of good or mandated business practice to enable and support the processes and core business of the organisation and the organisation’s people to add value to that core business.' There are some interesting challenges in this and we are certain you would agree. Note that we specifically connect the KPO to the knowledge management system, the organisation’s core business and its people.
- Role. Its role includes assisting all knowledge workers in the successful completion of their tasks. This might include coaching and training staff on the tools they use; explaining and demonstrating the process of knowledge production; linking people to other people to facilitate knowledge sharing; weaving communities of practice; developing and maintaining taxonomies; designing, developing and populating databases, tailoring software applications to suit business needs; deploying new applications across the organisation together with the IT staff; defining needs for new applications with IT staff and any other appropriate knowledge productivity function.
- Techniques. It might have some specialist techniques available to it such as data mining, social or organisational network analysis, workshop facilitation, risk analysis, business outcome prioritisation, business modelling, financial planning, meeting support, software support (database development, spreadsheet development, macro support, template development) and general trouble shooting or problem solving.
- Business vs IT Context. It should also be the first port of call for any information management or knowledge management problem or issue. The KPO is also useful as an 'interpreter' or 'intermediary' between the IT staff managing the network, and the staff who use the network to produce and manage information and knowledge. You might see this as an unusual role, but our experience tells us that being able to provide business context to information technology staff and IT context to business staff, is a valuable service.
- Metrics. It should manage the production of metrics for executive staff to measure how well the organisation is performing with respect to its production of knowledge and/or its core business as it relates to knowledge production. This is an essential task …. because as they say … 'if you can’t measure it … you can’t improve it'. There are many more functions, some undoubtedly you could add.
Think of it as a 'one stop shop' and physical and virtual portal for all things information or knowledge! It isn’t there to take over from the CIO, but it could be part of the CIO’s organisation. In fact, the CIO may staff and manage many KPO’s or KMO’s, using them as a sort of tool to ensure good knowledge productivity practices are present throughout the organisation.
