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Other Voices: What Do You Do When You Work as a Knowledge Strategist? (Part 3)

April 25, 2013 By Guy St. Clair

Our second post in this series looked at the work of the knowledge strategist from the broader strategy perspective.

Not surprising to readers of these posts from SMR International, there’s another point of view.

While this is not one of the “other voices” of the posts’ title, you expect me to have my own take on this subject, don’t you?

Here’s one approach to describing my point of view:

Two years ago I spoke to a group of specialist librarians about their career transitions – since a lot of change is going on in specialized librarianship – and I suggested that there are three types of people who work in this “knowledge domain” (as some of us call it):

  1. First of all, we’re Peter F. Drucker’s famous knowledge workers, those employees who undertake such activities as writing, analyzing, and advising. These employees are often not thought of as knowledge professionals, per se, and much of this work is performed by subject matter specialists in all areas of an organization. And it is this practice which leads, in some organizations, to the “promotion” (quote/unquote) of these individuals – people who act and communicate with knowledge within a specific subject area – to a larger or broader organizational role as “knowledge manager.” In this case, the connection with formal or academic KM learning, or even professional development or strategic learning, is often limited or if undertaken, self-driven.
  2. A second role is that of the strategic knowledge professionals, often thought of as “information professionals,” “content professionals,” records managers/coordinators, archivists, specialist librarians, and others working in related roles supporting the management of the organization’s knowledge domain. These employees can usually be counted on to contribute to an enterprise-wide understanding of a subject or group of subjects through focused analysis, design and/or development, and they use their research skills to define problems and to identify alternatives. They generally connect to professionals in other disciplines and work (generally) with captured knowledge – tangible information – in physical or electronic repositories, with the distinction being that the knowledge these professionals manage is strategic, directly connected to organizational or corporate effectiveness.
  3. A third “level” of knowledge professional (we might call it) are the organizational or corporate knowledge strategists whose work is generally thought of as the management of knowledge services, developing and implementing strategies for matching the corporate knowledge strategy with the organization’s business strategy or mission. As employees, knowledge strategists are expected to design and plan knowledge-related activities and policy, and knowledge strategists are particularly expected to give attention to future knowledge-related roles and activities that will affect corporate or organizational success. And a very important distinction with respect to knowledge strategists is that they are not necessarily people who have been educated to have or simply possess “information skills,” not as we use the term to connect with the work of information professionals like specialist librarians and the other information and knowledge professionals I just mentioned.
For more information about my perspective on work in the knowledge domain, the presentation that included these comments is The New Knowledge Services: The Next Decade (Presentation June 13, 2011 Information Technology Division Special Libraries Association Annual Conference, Philadelphia PA USA.
That’s it. Now you have three versions about working as a knowledge strategist. Any comments? Thoughts? Opinions? Let us hear from you.
[Post your comments here, if you like. Also feel free to post at the several LinkedIn Groups where these posts are shared. We’ll try to copy your comments here, to have them on one place and for easier access later.]

 

About Guy St. Clair

Guy St. Clair is the Series Editor for Knowledge Services, from Verlag Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin, the scholarly publishing house specializing in academic literature. The series subject is knowledge services, the approach to managing intellectual capital that merges information management, knowledge management (KM), and strategic learning, presenting and discussing new and innovative approaches to knowledge sharing in all fields of work.

With Barrie Levy, Guy  is the author of The Knowledge Services Handbook: A Guide for the Knowledge Strategist (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020). He is also the author of Knowledge Services: A Strategic Framework for the 21st Century Organization (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016). [Note: Go here for the free PDF version of this book: https://bit.ly/3msI27V. ]

Guy is also the author of Knowledge Services: Five Free Webinars from Guy St. Clair, available to anyone who wants to learn more about knowledge services. The webinars are offered at no charge.

Guy’s other professional writings are listed in SMR International’s corporate website, at SMRShare. 

Comments

  1. Mary E. Woolsey says

    April 26, 2013 at 11:23 pm

    The breakouts you are advocating in this third part, is right on in terms of the breakouts and the type of role each plays in their organizations. I do find myself caught between the roles of strategic knowledge professionals (#2) and the knowledge strategists (#3); and not comfortably able to fit either role in terms of the job world. It has been a rather long haul, almost 2 years with no possible job in sight. The library world see me belonging to the data management world, and the information technology sees me as not having enough computer software experience and thus belong to the library world. I am at a loss of how else to educate organizations about what I have to offer in terms of knowledge/data management combined with libraries for a job hunt.

    Reply
  2. Guy St. Clair says

    April 28, 2013 at 5:48 pm

    Mary, you raise a very serious issue as the different fields of specialization in the larger knowledge domain all begin to come together.

    I find myself working with colleagues who describe this situation very much as you describe your situation, and while I sometimes sound like the proverbial “broken record,” the advice I offer is to customize one’s prior activities to what the prospective employer is seeking.

    It’s hard to do with a resume, but it’s do-able.

    If, for example (since I don’t know your situation I’ll use the generic “one”), one has experience — possibly as a specialist librarian or research associate or manager — that can be “translated” into terms relating to the work of either the strategic knowledge professional or the knowledge strategist (whichever one the potential employer is looking for), one can re-phrase one’s language to match the principles required for success in one or the other workplace needs.

    And one of our good colleagues advises putting together some thoughts along these lines (see Other Voices: Michael Potters Talks About Career Branding for Knowledge Strategists at http://smr-knowledge.com/knowledgeservices/other-voices-michael-potters-talks-about-career-branding-for-knowledge-strategists-3/) and sending them off. Not to the usual HR staff in organizations where you want to work, but to the individual managers in the departments where the work would take place.

    Perhaps worth considering. Good luck.

    Reply

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