The CKO Conundrum

Not like me to have multiple posts on the same day (I am far too lazy to do that!), but I came across a definition of the role of the CKO, and that got me thinking.

Looking at the term from two perspectives ... Can Knowledge be "Officered"? If you agree with me that Knowledge is something which people carry in their heads, or rather, Knowledge is information applied (to work, or otherwise ...), experience that is internalized, the CKO should really be the CKF (Facilitator, if you may ...)!

But given that we are still debating on what is Knowledge (nobody told me yet that this issue has been resolved to everybody's satisfaction, so I will assume that the debate rages on), let us move away from this thought process, and look at another.

The term CKO, to my mind, is pretty much "pre-Social Computing" era term. What I am trying to say is that the term brings to mind a hirarchical structure which defines how knowledge shall flow in the organization, while in today's Social Computing era, I would much rather look at the CKO more as a canal which guides the water flow, but cannot, in any way, dictate it.

And I am sure you would agree with the Water analogy?