New Agora

James Robertson makes an excellent point about the need for Knowledge Managers to be realistic about the outcomes they can achieve:

[Knowledge managers are] stuck in the shadow of immortal figures. In the world of KM literature, knowledge managers stride god-like through their organisations, radically transforming how staff and business units operate. They reshape firms into “knowledge-centric businesses”, overcome organisational silos, and prevent reinvention of the wheel.

This is, of course, crazy. Not even the CEO can single-handedly transform an organisation. As mere mortals, knowledge managers are set up for failure with they measure their projects against these grand objectives.

At the end of the day, if a knowledge manager delivers more value in a year than their salary and (meagre) budget, they’re ahead. If they solve one small but important issue, they’re doing their job. To achieve this, they need to escape these immortal visions, and focus on the work that can be done by mortals.

My only quibble with James' statement is that only achieving a benefit in excess of costs ignores the opportunity cost of providing a knowledge manager in the first place, but aside from that I think it is well worth knowledge managers keeping this in the back of their mind.