This question gets asked a lot! While pursuing my Masters in Information and Knowledge Management (IM / KM) I was asked this many many times by friends and family who aren't in the field but interested in understanding what I was studying. Even after completing my degree and re-entering the IT world I discovered there are a lot of people in IT that really don't know what exactly KM is or what a "KM professional" does, or should be doing. Thus, I am still often asked "What is Knowledge Management?" As an intro to what is a big and complex topic I have a 15 second elevator pitch describing the intent behind my education. "The university identified a void in the information field and built upon the massively respected foundation of the information sciences faculty by supplemented it with equal parts from the computer science and business faculties to create a new kind of super hero. A super hero that will make sense of all our information and be able to deliver its power in a meaningful way. A Master of Information!" People usually nod with some understanding because this combination makes a tremendous amount of sense. The remainder of the fifteen second pitch is reserved for a dramatic pause, super hero power postures and a forced pity laugh. I then say, "What is knowledge management? It's everything."

If someone maintains eye contact after my elevator pitch power poses I straighten my tie and break KM down into the five traditional categories people are usually familiar with. Most find that at least one or two of these aligns with their perception of KM depending on their experience. But, to me, it's all five because... that's right! It's everything! You get it.

Organizational Knowledge and Skill Development Information Repositories ( Library / Research, Records, CRM, ITSM and etc... ...Enterprise Content Management / Information Management ) Collaboration The Robots (AI)

We work together lots and lots creating lots and lots of knowledge. We store this knowledge in repositories we create. Yay! We created information from knowledge and stored it! Concrete proof we're more than opposable thumbs dressed in business attire. These repositories get big. Real big. And quickly, really really real big. We work together in new paradigms of content creation, collaboration, delivery and consumption at a staggering scale. We have a lot of stuff. Almost everything. The sum of our information collections is so vast we've invented robots to look at all our stuff and to tell us greater things about our stuff. When we put it all together the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Is your organization leveraging all it can to deliver as effectively as possible? Doesn't it make sense to have expertise that helps you do that?

A mature KM culture and practice helps you sort through everything to find and deliver the right content at the right time. KM is the entire organization's intellectual property and power. It is the core of an organization's purpose, direction, operations, transformation, community and social accountability and the ability to do the tasks of these things at a granular level. Let me ask you this... do all of your employees and customers know how to help your organization reach it's goals, perform administrative and personal professional duties while developing themselves and each other, while avoiding risk and being well engaged? Can they find the right thing at the right time? Can your customers get what they need from your organization? Do they know about all your organization offers? As CIO have you worked with the business to enable this? How? What does that look like? Oh! Right! You're asking me! That makes sense, you clicked the link and here we are. Don't worry, I've gotcha.

My expertise is in digital transformation and content delivery. To who? Everyone. The right information at the right time to the right person. Employees, leadership, but especially to your customers. Please watch this space to explore the content delivery side of KM with me. Feel free to comment or message to discuss.

Chris