What to Ask When Hiring a CKO

By
Carla O'Dell
on November 5, 2008 Comments (1)
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One of our members is about to hire a chief knowledge officer (CKO) and asked APQC to supply some interview questions to put to the candidates.   Of course, we have no shortage of suggestions, but we decided to solicit input from our KM Edge group on LinkedIn, as well. Below are just three of APQC's suggestions as well as excerpts from the responses provided by members of our LinkedIn community. If you have additional suggestions, we would love to hear them--please post your thoughts in the comments section at the end of this entry.

APQC's Interview Questions

  1.  "What can we tell you about our organization relevant to knowledge?"
  2. "How would you go about discovering where the biggest opportunities lie for KM to make a difference to our organization?"
  3. "What do you anticipate our biggest issues to be and how would you address them?"

Responses from the KM Edge LinkedIn Community

From Art Gregory, Global Knowledge Manager, Parsons Brinckerhoff:

A successful CKO understands that KM is one of the most difficult ROIs to prove to all the LOB leaders that make up the Senior Management team. Measurement and Metrics help but there is "no bottom line" to point to. Therefore, the CKO must be able to work closely and understand finance quite well. The KM components that lead to sales successes need to be documented. The KM component of practically every activity needs to be recognized and traceable. Therefore a CKO must also possess the ability to develop and motivate people who not only build and capture IC/IP but also track and maintain the history of knowledge use and outcomes of use.

From Neil Olonoff, Chair, Federal KM Initiative Committee, and  KM Lead, US Army HQDA G-4/Innolog:

I would put each candidate in a role-playing situation, as though they already had the job, and I would ask them to ask the interviewers questions and volunteer directions. I would look for (1) a holistic approach to organizational mission and culture; (2) sensitivity to the organization's present status and situation, such as profitability, strength, etc.; (3) open-mindedness as regards potential solutions, and not jumping towards any particular set (content, collaboration, connectivity, whatever) in advance; (4) questioning and awareness of the importance of the various stakeholder groups that may exist.

From Stewart Sutton, Principal Scientist for Knowledge Management, The Aerospace Corporation:

First the questions would be different if the candidate was internal vs external. The reason for that is the significant role that attention to culture plays in that role. For an external candidate, I would first seek to understand how they would come to understand the organizational culture. Once they have a handle on that, then the next inspection point is how they would value that culture as they seek to enhance the prescriptive knowledge assets of value and process-technology change and/or diminish the ineffective prescriptive techniques.

If it is an internal candidate, I'd be looking for innovation and creativity and a passion for change. I would also be seeking someone with established political capital within the organization and a reputation for getting things done.

While an external candidate would be accommodated for making certain cultural changes with some disruption, an internal candidate would generally have to seek greater consensus since tolerance for disruption would be lower.

But probably most important of all is the authority to sponsor and effect change and the middle management buy-in that would be critical for this position (if it is new to the organization). The best of external or internal candidates would likely not prevail a protracted war of passive-aggressive by line management.


Note: Join the KM Edge LinkedIn community to read the full responses, post your own KM discussion questions, and network with KM colleagues and peers.

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1 Comments

Dale Arseneault Author Profile Page on November 10, 2008 9:18 AM

A few other suggestions:

"Knowledge strategies / programs are emergent, meaning that learning takes place through implementation, the strategies / programs are then adjusted, and though the overall outcomes are met, often not as originally planned. What approaches do you / would you adopt to build learning into program / strategy execution and govern emergence? What have you learned from your past experiences?"

"Successful knowledge strategies / programs are contingent on effective partnerships between key stakeholder partners; HR, IT, IM, Communications etc. What approaches / strategies do you / would you adopt to build / sustain effective stakeholder partnerships? What have you learned from your past experiences?"

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