The CIO, CKO, CLO – Understanding Critical Positions in an Organization
In today’s business environment, knowledge has become a key advantage for organizations leveraging it. This is true for both digital and traditional businesses. Therefore, organizations want to appropriately manage their knowledge and resources. This is where KM teams come into the picture. Organizations have teams responsible for different activities, and these teams are led by different people based on their roles and responsibilities.
Some of the critical positions are CIO, CKO, and CLO. Today, I would like to discuss these critical positions with you.
Who is CIO, and What Do They Do?
CIO stands for Chief Information Officer. CIO is the corporate executive responsible for information technology and information system that supports the enterprise’s goals. CIO sets up an IT strategy and aligns it with the business objectives, including the KM strategy.
Technology is vital in KM activities as it is used for storing and decimating information. Therefore, the right technology can decide the fate of KM activities.
In most organizations, the CIO is focused on the strategic aspect of IT systems rather than day-to-day implementation and maintenance (Gartner Glossary). This is where the role of the CIO differs from the CTO or the IT director. Most CIOs spend their time finding intelligent and innovative ways to develop new ideas and ensuring that the IT infrastructure and setup are optimum and future-ready.
CIO is the interface between the technology department and the business. The technology department involves web hosting, servers, content delivery networks, load balancers, cloud infrastructure (like Azure or AWS), databases, CRM, and AI&ML services.
A right KM management strategy involves the right usage of all or some of these tools appropriately.
Who is CKO, and What Do They Do?
CKO stands for Chief Knowledge Officer. CKO is the corporate executive who owns knowledge management within an organization. CKO ensures that the company is getting befitted from the knowledge resources. Often, these profits are measured in terms of tangible financial gains as well. The duties and responsibilities of the CKO involve the intellectual capital and organisational preservation and distribution of knowledge (TechTarget).
This explanation should help us understand that CKO is the key personnel looking into KM activities for the organization. CKOs oversee the KM management, patent applications, internal training and documenting (codifying), and knowledge sharing (Wikipedia).
CKO can further help an organization maximize ROI on the investment made in knowledge, and benefits from the intangible assets from the branding, CRM, patents, etc. CKO will always work towards avoiding loss of knowledge resulting from loss of personnel.
Who is CLO, and What Do They Do?
CLO stands for Chief Learning Officer. CLO is the corporate executive responsible for learning within an organization. This person is not looking after a classroom and ensuring that everyone is learning, but this person is ensuring that all the employees are learning and remain informed about the latest trends in related skills of an employee (Elm Learning). This role is important for the KM activities and success of the organization, and employee satisfaction in the organization. The employees who believe there are no learning opportunities in their current role and their growth is stagnated at risk of iteration.
CLOs create, develop, and oversee comprehensive employment learning plans that include online and offline methods. For example, my current organization supports my learning goals by providing me unlimited free access to LinkedIn Learning and Coursera. These platforms offer many courses I can use at no cost to keep myself up to date. In addition, employees who keep learning consistently over time are often rewarded with promotions as different certifications and degrees distinguish employees who are willing to exceed expectations.
CLOs are typically involved in taking strategic decisions around the organization’s information management system, overseeing the learning curriculum and learning management system, ensuring a smooth onboarding process for new hires, and crafting and overseeing the learning strategy for the organization.
I hope I was able to discuss and explain the key roles within an organization and their roles and responsibilities.
References:
Chief Knowledge Officer from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://tinyurl.com/2kbm9pe9
Chief Information Officer (CIO), Gartner Glossary https://tinyurl.com/2p98vpf3
Chief Learning Officer (CLO): Job Description, Trends, and Salaries by Elm Learning https://tinyurl.com/48ntsds8
CKO (chief knowledge officer) by TechTarget https://tinyurl.com/bdhd8hn8
Dalkir, K. (2017). In Knowledge management in theory and practice. essay, MIT Press.
What is a CIO? Everything you need to know about the Chief Information Officer explained by Mark Samuels https://tinyurl.com/2p8nw635
Will Kenton (2021). Chief Information Officer (CIO) https://tinyurl.com/4k4yzx82