Field is Professional in Residence at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI, and Ganly is formerly Assistant Director, Science, Industry, and Business Library of The New York Public Library in New York, NY. St. Clair is President and Consulting Specialist at SMR International in New York.

Induction into SLA’s Hall of Fame recognizes an individual’s service and contribution to the Association and to specialized librarianship, and the professional careers of Field, Ganly, and St. Clair are described in a video prepared for the June 13 Opening General Session of the SLA Conference.

As the preeminent international professional organization for specialized librarianship, SLA serves some 10,000 strategic knowledge professionals in 75 countries, promoting and strengthening them through learning, advocacy, and networking initiatives.

The words come from Stephen Kizza, a librarian with the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources in Kampala, Uganda. In his correspondence and writings, Kizza signs off with a phrase that is both poignant and meaningful to strategic knowledge professionals, particularly those dealing with Africa and KM/knowledge services in the research and business communities of the nations of Africa: ”Look backwards with gratitude, upward with confidence, forward with hope.”

Could there be any stronger motivation for us? Could there be any better way to describe our aspirations for our work in Africa?

At the recent Special Libraries Association (SLA) Conference in New Orleans, through the generous sponsorship of Copyright Clearance Center and CCC’s “Beyond the Book” program, a “Hot Topics” session focused on strategic knowledge management and the KM/knowledge services needs of developing countries. Entitled “Global Information Sharing – A Dream Come True: Sharing Information Brings People Together,” the program was moderated by Christopher Kenneally, Director, Business Development, at the Copyright Clearance Center.

In the program, Dennie Heye of Shell in the Netherlands and Kenneally described how Kizza and Heye had become acquainted and how their conversations about strategic knowledge and specialized librarianship in Africa had influenced Kizza’s work. An important part of the story, not surprisingly, is how it demonstrates how strategic knowledge professionals can work with colleagues in other countries. It is a model that seems, from almost any perspective, eminently workable.

Kizza’s presentation, Special Libraries in Developing Countries: Information Management State of Affairs and Development Opportunities, was shown with recorded voiceover, as Kizza was unable to attend the conference due to U.S. visa restrictions. Having been invited by SLA’s Petroleum and Energy Resources Division to present at the conference, this program and the next day’s division meeting and discussion provided an opportunity for conference attendees to hear and discuss Kizza’s important description of information and knowledge management in Uganda.

Following the presentation, Heye described how he and Kizza had become acquainted, and how they and other knowledge professionals work together to support Kizza’s KM/knowledge services work in meeting user needs. At this point Kenneally invited Guy St. Clair, SMR International President and Consulting Specialist for Knowledge Services, to share his own experiences in this area.

St. Clair described his work, a knowledge strategy development assignment in Nairobi for the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT). During his recent six-month assignment (and expected to continue in up-coming work with UN-HABITAT), St. Clair has been able to participate in volunteer work with the Information Africa Organization (IAO) an NGO that seeks to strengthen ICT and KM training  for Kenya’s youth. St. Clair has also been able to meet with academic leaders, working with interested colleagues in Nairobi and Nakuru to advise about incorporating KM/knowledge services into the curriculum of the country’s many specialized graduate programs. In his comments, St. Clair connected his experiences and observations with the work Heye and Kizza are doing for Africa’s research and business communities.

Listen to the podcast BTB # 173: An Information Dream or read the transcript at Beyond the Book – 15 June 2010 – Transcript.

Note: IAO has been described previously at the SMR International site:

January 2010 The Information Africa Organization (IAO): The Birth of A Movement – Kenya’s Focus on Youth Opens the Door to Amazing Potential for the Country, by Guy St. Clair

May 2010 SMR International Special Report: Closing the Digital Divide: Dealing with Drucker’s ‘Responsibility Gap’ in Africa – Kenya Anticipates the ICT/KM Future with Enthusiasm, by Guy St. Clair

A Second Chance: The Information Africa Organization (IAO)’s Splendid Mission – Taking Social Responsibility Seriously [Presentation]

Curious about the role of knowledge services in today’s workplace?

Take a look at this: Knowledge Services and Change Management: Building the Company’s Knowledge Culture [Presentation]

For more information about how your company can strengthen knowledge sharing in the workplace and reduce management and transaction costs, contact SMR International at: info@smr-knowledge.com

Or get in touch with Guy St. Clair, SMR’s President and Consulting Specialist for Knowledge Services.

Guy’s in New York at 917.797.1500 or 212.683.6285, or you can contact him at guystclair@smr-knowledge.com.

As with similar assignments relating to  knowledge strategy, one is left with both a sense of accomplishment that the big job is finished and a certain sense of sadness that the job is no longer the focus of one’s professional life. Implementation will move forward, and change – both cultural change and structural change – will be managed with the expectation that organizational effectiveness will be enhanced. It is a good time for reflection, to think about lessons learned. And what might be shared with other KM/knowledge services professionals.

Below is a list of 12 “tips” – you might call them – for developing enterprise-wide knowledge strategy. Further comment about each of these can be found in the June 2010 SMR International Briefing, “June 2010 SMR International Briefing: Knowledge Strategy Development Project Completed – Lessons Learned.”

1. Establish clear terms of reference
2. Secure senior management sponsorship
3. Understand the framework
4. Focus on the big picture
5. Recognize that succinctness is a virtue
6. Prepare to be flexible
7. Expect total (or as total as possible) involvement
8. Understand working styles
9. Encourage communities of practice
10. Move outside the client organization
11. Lead by example
12. Develop enthusiasm

Finally: be proud of yourself. You’re changing people’s lives, especially their lives in the workplace. Once the knowledge strategy is in place and implementation begins – and continues – your client’s employees are going to work smarter (and work SMART). While the many elements of knowledge strategy development must be your focus (things like identifying the scope of the project, conducting the knowledge audit, identifying knowledge assets – and recommending new knowledge assets – describing the gaps and constraints that must be addressed, developing managerial and structural recommendations), never lose sight of the fact that your team’s work will make things better for everybody in the organization. Like what you’re doing and be pleased when you’ve done it.

- Guy St. Clair

SMR President Guy St. Clair is an IAO volunteer, using the SMR International site to report on the organization’s progress and, as appropriate, providing consulting and advisory services. With the former, SMR has published both an e-Profile and a special report about the organization and expects to continue bringing attention to IAO through the SMR’s work with clients and colleagues.

Asked to share some of his ideas about strategic learning in the ICT/KM/knowledge services arena, St. Clair spoke to the IAO  Board of Directors at a recent meeting. St. Clair’s presentation –  “A Second Chance: IAO’s Splendid Mission – Taking Responsibility Seriously” offered talking points for a lively discussion about the role of NGOs in society and, in particular, about how organizations, companies, and individuals can incorporate social responsibility into the corporate and organizational mission. [Click on the presentation title to view the slides.]

Drawing on Peter F. Drucker’s concerns about the “responsibility gap,” St. Clair urged board members to ensure that in planning strategic learning endeavors for ICT/KM/knowledge services, they and prospective partners grasp the critical importance of competitiveness in the development of knowledge competencies. It is only in achieving excellence in their strategic learning products and services, St. Clair said, that companies and organizations ensure the success of training and knowledge-sharing.

Matching strategic learning in ICT/KM/knowledge services – IAO’s purpose – with what he refers to as the “knowledge uptake” in corporate and organizational management (and – more important – in society at large), St. Clair identified “dramatic opportunities for the future” in working with young people. He provided an optimistic picture of IAO’s potential in this area and, with board members, discussed a number of planned objectives for the organization and its future development.

In today’s KM/knowledge services marketplace, Privat continues to bring customer-focused products and services to a continually expanding target group: knowledge workers in the nonprofit and philanthropy community who must access information, knowledge, and strategic learning content to achieve organizational effectiveness.

Working with the King County Library System’s Nonprofit and Philanthropy Resource Center, which she created in 2000, Privat brings the professional expertise, subject strengths, and marketing skills of specialized librarianship to an extremely popular program. In cooperation with The Foundation Center, NPRC provides access to Foundation Center databases for NPRC clients and offers a heavy schedule of educational, awareness-raising, networking, and strategic learning opportunities to nonprofit staff of the Pacific Northwest.

A side benefit of Privat’s involvement with NPRC has been the development of a nonprofit community of practice, a networking opportunity ready-made for people who seek to learn how they can work better and smarter in the nonprofit and philanthropic arena.

For the full story, read the latest SMR International e-Profile: Never Lunch Alone… And Other Immutable Precepts for Creating a Knowledge Culture, by Marcie Stone.

And a critically important issue has to do with: who-does-the-work? – that age-old conundrum in which I as the manager of the strategic knowledge function have to be something of a juggler or traffic cop.

It’s my job – and it’s not an easy job – to make sure all the connections are made, that all the clients of the knowledge services functional unit (when there is a distinctive, stand-alone knowledge services unit) are linked with the people (and/or other functional units) in the organization who have the information, knowledge, and the strategic learning content they require.

One of the classic principles of good management in the knowledge services arena is to make that connection, to apply the highest standards of knowledge services delivery to bring together the knowledge client and the strategic knowledge professional. How do we do it, when so much of our team’s focus has to be committed to operational duties, to keep the functional unit functioning (sorry)?

The quick solution is pretty obvious, isn’t it? We look for “extra” help, so to speak. We try to work with the client to identify the depth of the need, the “big-picture” scope of the process, and we try to come up with a solution that brings all the players to the table. There are a couple of useful choices we can make.

Back when SMR International was first getting involved with consulting in knowledge services, one of our earliest contributions was the “in-sourced” knowledge professional. Yes, that was the term we used (perhaps we thought we were being clever, since “outsourcing” was getting a pretty bad reputation at the time, a situation that has fortunately dissipated in today’s management arena – see below).

Today, we describe these in-sourced knowledge professionals as “embedded” information or knowledge specialists, but the structure is still pretty much the same, regardless of how you describe the knowledge workers. It’s the work that has to be done, and as the manager of the strategic knowledge function for the company, I might be asked, say, to supply knowledge services support for a program or development plan, and it’s my job to see that strategic knowledge is made available for the people who will be participating in project.

At SMR, we’ve seen this happen with a number of clients, and when given thought, the result can be very successful. Perhaps there’s a large research institution (such as one we dealt with in Washington not too many years ago) in which costly – and pretty important, from a societal point of view – research projects are brought before a governing body, to be discussed and, if agreed upon, chosen for a study. We found that much time and energy and money was being wasted because – in putting forth the proposals for the studies – program managers were not calculating in knowledge services costs. Required information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning content were all just “skipped over” until the project was well under way, by which time all sorts of compromises and difficult short-cuts had to be factored in.

Our solution? To in-source (or embed, if you like, since that term became so popular after the U.S. Army started “embedding” journalists reporting on the first Gulf War) a strategic knowledge professional from the get-go. In the situation described above, we simply recommended that the organization find someone in the knowledge services functional unit who understood the program being proposed and who could work with the concept team – as well as with the program itself if it became authorized – to serve as the program’s strategic knowledge “guru,” so to speak. With an in-sourced or embedded knowledge services professional as part of the team – from the inception of the program idea – the overall cost of the program is more realistically determined, with nasty financial surprises kept to a minimum.

In another scenario, we go to the other end of the spectrum: when there isn’t a knowledge services functional unit in the organization, or if that function does not have staff who can be in-sourced or embedded into a program or project, you outsource. As the knowledge service manager, you work with the program concept team – again, in the earliest concept stages – to make sure team members understand what the strategic knowledge requirements are going to be, and you make sure they build the costs into their program proposals (early in the discussion – can’t emphasize that strongly enough!). Once the program or project is approved, whether it is a product development group or a re-working of a program or service that needs some level of refurbishment or (in some cases) simply a review, the knowledge services manager positions himself or herself to find a qualified strategic knowledge professional from outside the company to be the strategic knowledge expert for the project.

Whether we are looking to in-source/embed or outsource, the end result is the same. The program or product development team is provided with the strategic knowledge expertise required for the project’s success, and the costs for that expertise are clearly stated upfront.

One of the good things about modern society is the enormous diversity of professional work that moves society forward. One of the difficult things about modern society is all this professional diversity. It’s a challenge for a great many people to understand just what it is that this-or-that professional worker does in the workplace.

What is it about their job that makes it interesting? Why do they do it? What kind of “contribution” are they making to society? Do they like working in this professional role?

And when someone comes up to them at, say, a cocktail party or in a bar, just how do they explain what it is they do?

And knowledge workers have an even tougher time when it comes to this sort of thing, simply because knowledge as a concept isn’t something most people think about a lot. But when we connect what we do with something that affects just about everybody in their daily lives, we can almost see the light bulbs coming on.

So try this out. The healthcare industry is something we’re all involved with, and this imaginary little scenario might give us some ideas for the next time someone asks, “What’s KM/knowledge services all about, anyway?”

Take a look at Explaining KM/Knowledge Services: The Healthcare Industry is a Good Place to Start and see if some of the things going on in KM/knowledge services in healthcare can’t be transferred to some other fields of interest.

The SMR International corporate mission is to help organizations build their own knowledge culture, to use knowledge for achieving the parent organization’s corporate mission and for enabling everyone affiliated with the company to pursue the same corporate vision.

In its strategic alliance with SLA, SMR International now offers a course in the subject and strategic knowledge professionals can learn how to lead the knowledge culture strategy in their organizations. Just contact SMR International to learn how to have the SLA team come to your organization for customized strategic learning about building the knowledge culture.

For strategic knowledge professionals who prefer a Web-based learning activity, SMR International – through its strategic alliance with SLA and SLA’s Click U – SMR International offers a three-week course: Building the Knowledge Culture: Leadership and Knowledge Services.

Why take the course?  Simple: In the course, you learn techniques for establishing the relationship between the management of KM/knowledge services and organizational leadership. The critical result is the development and on-going implementation of an enterprise-wide knowledge culture.

What are the dates? May 10, 17, 19, 24, and 27. Each class meets at 3.00 pm (ET) for one hour. Three lectures and two group discussions, including one discussion, on May 19, with Guest Participant Ken Wheaton. Read Ken’s The future of the future: Rise of the knowledge librarian if you want a good take on what will be discussed.

More information and registration is here. The course is open to all (you do not have to be a member of SLA to participate, and you do not have to be taking the entire Click U Certification Program for KM/Knowledge Services – although that would be a good idea and save you lots of money).

A new special report from SMR International takes a look at efforts to train Africa’s youth in ICT and KM skills.

Linking that effort to recent attention about the “responsibility gap” from the Drucker Institute at Claremont Graduate University, the report (“Closing the Digital Divide: Dealing with Drucker’s ‘Responsibility Gap’ in Africa”) takes the position that management leadership has a greater responsibility than simply achieving organizational effectiveness.

In addressing what Peter Drucker used to refer to as the “responsibility gap,” SMR’s new report has five key points:

1. Current examples of unprincipled behavior in corporate and organizational management seem to imply a moral weakness in society
2. Peter Drucker asserted that managers have a moral obligation to avoid the “responsibility gap” and embrace social responsibility
3. In Kenya, managers and leaders are joining together to provide youth with strategic learning and training in ICT/KM
4. NGOs, the Kenyan government, development and humanitarian organizations, the international business community, and local businesses are working together to achieve this goal
5. These initiatives exemplify Drucker’s assertion: management’s task is two-fold: to achieve organizational effectiveness and to contribute to the common good.

The SMR International Special Report is available at SMRShare. Or the Special Report can be accessed directly here.