John Mancini’s Imperatives: They Work for Knowledge Strategists

Always rewarding to hear what leaders have to say about managing knowledge services. I’m continually on the look-out for stimulating (and useful) direction for strengthening performance in managing information, knowledge, and strategic learning, so it was good to read that AIIM President John Mancini has devised “The Six Imperatives Facing Information Professionals.”

Mancini writes about his six imperatives at his own blog (Digital Landfill) and now kmworld has published them for us in kmworld’s April 2012 issue. Here they are, with my own “take” on how knowledge strategists can benefit from thinking about John’s imperatives:

1. Make everything mobile. “Redefine content delivery and process automation to take advantage of mobile devices and mobile work forces.” Knowledge strategists: Identify the advocates for mobile knowledge-sharing in the company. There are plenty, and they can use your advice, especially if your company is one of those that committed to a single enterprise-wide device early on. Make yourself known to members of the team trying to figure out how to handle the transition to a multiple-device environment. You need to be part of that decision, and you have a lot to contribute with your knowledge (and experience) of the larger corporate knowledge-sharing culture.
2. Digitize process. “Drive process bottlenecks out of processes and automate process flows.” Knowledge strategists: Start with RIM pain points – listen to supervisors and managers struggling with managing both paper-based and digital documents (especially people who don’t work with intellectual capital management as part of their “regular” job). They need your advice about how to connect with others dealing with the same issues. You can be the go-between because you – as the knowledge strategist – know who has systems that work and who doesn’t.
3. Make business social. “Integrate social technologies into processes rather than create standalone social networks.” Knowledge strategists: Again, leverage your “listening” role. You’re often called into this group or that department to advise about social media networks (and hopefully, by this point, about personal/departmental network analysis), so why not attempt a framework that encourages more knowledge sharing? Start with the low-hanging fruit and look for those processes that lend themselves to quick social network solutions. Once you have some high-visibility success, build on it.
4. Use automation to ensure information governance. “Acknowledge that the paper-based records paradigm no longer works in the digital workplace – if it ever did – and use automation to ensure governance and disposition.” Knowledge strategists: Work with corporate leadership (Board of Directors, Office of the CEO, etc.) to identify documents that can be immediately switched to digitization only. Use carefully designed time and labor (and storage) cost analyses for running both electronic and paper-based operations. You know it’s expensive so share what you know. […connects with Item 2, above.]
5. Commit to the cloud. “Break down monolithic ‘enterprise’ solutions into more ‘app-like’ solutions that can be deployed quickly independent of platform and in the cloud.” Knowledge strategists: This one isn’t complicated and, as John mentions, gives us the opportunity for further discussion about the advantages of SaaS and cloud-based content. I think we’re (mostly) beyond all those security fears that bothered management in the early days of SaaS – not that long ago, really – and when we think about the economic advantages, knowledge strategists are well advised to evangelize for cloud-based KM. Also connects to that single-access “silver bullet” we keep talking about because it’s going to be in breaking down and compartmentalizing that we’re going to deal with big data. Read on.
6. Mine big content. “Find insights and value in massive aggregations of unstructured information and explore what big data will mean for information professionals.” Knowledge strategists: This is your opportunity: it’s where the jobs are going to be for information and knowledge strategists in the future. And by “future” I mean sooner rather than later. We’ll be dealing with big data in a wide variety of ways (including some non-enterprise wide applications) but none of it is going to happen without a corporate knowledge strategy, and that’s where you come in.

Thanks to John Mancini and AIIM for pulling this together. Good content for AIIM’s members and, happy to say, to spread out amongst other knowledge workers as well.