CKO and CLO: The New Age change managers

Sudipta Dev/ Mumbai

The chief knowledge officer (CKO) and the chief learning officer (CLO) are the hottest new portfolios in IT circles that are suddenly evincing a lot of interest. Who is a CKO / CLO, and why is his significance now being realised in the high-tech industry? While a CKO is in charge of structuring a company’s store of technical and business knowledge and makes it accessible to the employees, a CLO is the top executive responsible for organisational learning. These are people in charge of the intellectual capital of a company and their importance stems from the fact that they ensure a corporate culture that is learning and growing. The CKO leverages on knowledge and the CLO on learning in the organisation, to meet a singular aim—business objectives.

The functionalities of both are almost similar most of the time, so if an organisation creates a post for a CKO, appointing a CLO is not considered a norm. One of their primary objectives is to tap on the intellectual (knowledge) resources and align it with the vision and business goals of the organisation. R Ramkumar, the CKO of Cognizant Technology Solutions, elaborates on the profile of a CKO: “A CKO must be a leader who understands the organisation’s strategies, integrates them with business processes and technologies and brings about a knowledge-sharing environment. He must be a change agent, constantly selling the value of knowledge and be willing to participate in all organisational programmes. Ideally, a CKO should be like a senior manager who is on back-slapping terms with the business and processes of the organisation, but never a new hire.” The skill sets of a CKO can be outlined as follows: Business management, process management, project and programme management, information technology and communications. Ramkumar points out that it is necessary for a CKO to have a good understanding of technology to be able to establish content repositories and collaboration, set-up communities of practice and process management. He should have a “global” mindset but be able to address local needs, build relationships and motivate employees and partners to achieve their potential.

The need factor

Why is it necessary to appoint a CKO? Knowledge-sharing is critical in a knowledge-based industry, and consequently the need to have a dedicated knowledge management team headed by a CKO. “A CKO is a catalyst for knowledge-sharing. He facilitates identifying, capturing, evaluating, sharing, leveraging and creating new enterprise knowledge assets—both explicit and tacit. Through this process he also ensures a closed-loop learning system in the organisation,” adds Ramkumar. He however reminds that

it is not necessary for all organisations to employ a CKO. Companies where knowledge is a “product” should employ a CKO, where he is the owner of the knowledge process and infrastructure, which he leverages to increase the value of the organisation. In organisations that have KM as the core of their business, the functions of a CKO will be rendered redundant as knowledge-sharing is already in place. Furthermore, in organisations that are characterised by stringent “hierarchical structures” and believe in a “command and control” type of management, the role of a CKO is always suspect as he champions for an open, sharing culture.

The CKO should be able to architect the knowledge environment; integrate knowledge management; and improve innovation. Although the CKO is not the one-point change-agent for transforming the culture of the organisation, he is the driver of cultural change management related to knowledge-sharing. Yet another key function of the CKO is preventing knowledge loss: “Attrition in employees or customers leads to a high degree of loss of knowledge. The CKO, through systems and processes, ensures minimal loss of knowledge during attrition,” says Ramkumar. The CKO, points out Ramkumar, also helps create knowledge metrics that are in consonance with the strategic goals and objectives of the organisation. He is also responsible for publishing the intellectual balance sheet to the executive management.

The learning focus

“IT organisations thrive only when individuals and teams learn, unlearn and learn. Without a focused effort, which makes a team accountable to make it happen, the learning activity will not happen effectively,” says Cyprian D’Souza, CEO of Kanbay India who also happens to be the global people care chief and the CLO of the organisation. The CLO, he states, is responsible for the following functions in an organisation: creating a learning culture; building competency keeping in mind business, individual and organisational needs; establish learning infrastructure, systems and processes; inculcate standards and practices for all aspects of learning process; and integrate effectiveness assessments. It is necessary for the CLO to have knowledge of the organisation’s business, he should be familiar with core technologies, possess a passion for learning processes and should have some experience in learning delivery modes.

Outsourcing debate

While CKOs and CLOs hold key positions in major global organisations, in India the trend is yet to catch on. At Kale Consultants there has been ongoing debate for the last three to five years on KM and the need to have a CKO. Vinayak Kamath, vice president of HR at Kale Consultants agrees that the role expectations of a CKO and a CLO overlap. But then, in the era of outsourced expertise, is there a need for such high profile executives in an organisation? Kamath acknowledges that such expertise should be outsourced to a consulting firm with management mandate for specific projects. Kalpana Jaishankar, director of human resources with Geometric Software Solutions argues that the CLO should be from within the organisation. “A CLO needs to be a senior person from a technical background who has been with the organisation for a considerable period of time and understands it well. He should be like a mentor,” states Jaishankar. According to Shubho Kundu, senior general manager of human resources, LG Soft India, companies typically tend to outsource only non-critical functions. And therefore, if an organisation felt that a CLO is required, it would be a mission-critical need for them and outsourcing this function would not arise.

The issue is that learning is often seen as a set of training programme and this evidently gives rise to the debate about outsourcing it. “Most of the learning, in fact, happens in everyday life in executing one’s responsibility. The job of a learning team is to put in place a set of integrated processes that makes learning happen—formally and informally; in team and individual setting; physically and virtually,” says D’Souza. The right focus, consequently, has to be on learning and not training. In training, the responsibility for success lies with the trainer, while in learning it is the learner who is responsible. Also, specific delivery /implementation aspects of learning activities can be outsourced, but the task of creating the culture, vision and strategy needs to be handled internally for greater ownership and integration.

But will the training department emerge as a strong and separate entity instead of being just a sub-function of the HR department? Says Kundu, “Even though the training department exists as a part of the HR department, it typically functions independently and indirectly interacts with the line business. Formally recognising that into a training and or/ learning department is the next logical step.” D’Souza rationalises that organisations choose to structure various activities differently to enable more effective management of information, accountability, decision-making, etc. The important thing is to see what role “learning” plays in the organisation, how best to structure it to ensure it is able to fulfill the desired role and give the results. If it is integrated in the HR function there are some distinct advantages as the learning activity needs to be integrated and seen as part of overall people development and “caring” activity. In most organisations HR is charged with this responsibility.

A change manager of new times, a CKO/CLO can however add value to only that organisation that sees learning as critical to business strategy, and recognises that there is a collective intelligence throughout the organisation.

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