Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Chief of Knowledge Management

🎯 Role Definition

The Chief of Knowledge Management (CKM) is the senior executive responsible for designing, implementing and sustaining an enterprise-wide knowledge management strategy that increases organizational learning, accelerates decision-making, preserves institutional knowledge, and improves productivity. The CKM leads cross-functional teams to develop taxonomy, governance, search and content strategies, drives adoption of KM platforms (knowledge bases, collaboration tools, enterprise search, AI-driven knowledge assistants), and partners with HR, IT, Legal and business leaders to embed knowledge practices into operations, onboarding, and continuous improvement.

This role requires deep experience in knowledge capture, information architecture, content governance, stakeholder engagement, and metrics-driven program management. The CKM acts as an advocate and change agent for knowledge sharing and reuse, removes friction to findability, and ensures knowledge assets are accurate, secure and aligned to business outcomes.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Director of Knowledge Management
Head of Information Architecture / Content Strategy
Senior Knowledge Manager or KM Program Director
Head of Learning & Development or Organizational Effectiveness (with KM experience)

Advancement To:

Chief Knowledge Officer / Global Head of Knowledge
SVP / VP of Digital Transformation
Chief Information Officer (CIO) or Chief Digital Officer (CDO)
Executive Sponsor for Enterprise Collaboration and Culture

Lateral Moves:

Head of Learning & Development / Talent Knowledge
Head of Information Governance / Records Management
Head of Customer Knowledge & Support (Knowledge-Centered Service)
Head of Content Strategy / Digital Workplace

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Develop and own the enterprise Knowledge Management strategy, roadmap and business case, aligning KM priorities with corporate objectives, digital transformation initiatives, and measurable ROI targets.
Design and implement a governance framework for knowledge lifecycle management, including policies for creation, validation, classification, retention, and retirement of content across the organization.
Lead the selection, deployment and continuous improvement of KM platforms and tools (knowledge bases, enterprise search, content management systems, AI/NLP knowledge assistants, ServiceNow/Confluence/SharePoint, and other collaboration technologies).
Define and maintain enterprise taxonomy, metadata standards, ontologies and tagging strategies to improve content findability, interoperability and automated classification across systems.
Build and lead a multidisciplinary KM organization (knowledge architects, content curators, KM analysts, community managers) including hiring, performance management, budgeting and career development.
Establish and run Communities of Practice and subject matter expert (SME) networks to capture tacit knowledge, surface lessons learned, and accelerate peer-to-peer knowledge transfer.
Drive change management and adoption programs (communication plans, trainings, champions programs, playbooks) to ensure high usage of KM platforms and consistent knowledge-capture behaviors.
Develop content quality and curation standards, implement editorial and review workflows, and enforce roles and responsibilities for subject matter validation and content ownership.
Partner with IT and Security to ensure KM systems comply with information security, privacy, retention and regulatory requirements; implement access controls and data protection for sensitive knowledge.
Implement search and findability optimization initiatives (search relevancy tuning, indexing, synonyms, facets, personalization) and run ongoing search analytics to reduce time-to-answer.
Create and monitor KM metrics and dashboards (usage, search success rates, deflection, time-to-resolution, reuse, content freshness) and use data to drive continuous improvements and report ROI to senior leadership.
Integrate KM with learning and development programs, onboarding, and succession planning to institutionalize knowledge transfer and accelerate new-hire productivity.
Lead knowledge capture during critical events such as M&A, program closeouts, and leadership transitions to mitigate institutional knowledge loss and enable continuity.
Oversee vendor relationships for third-party KM platforms, search engines, taxonomy tools, and AI/NLP providers; negotiate contracts, SLAs and drive vendor performance management.
Champion the integration of AI and advanced analytics (NLP, knowledge graphs, semantic search, question-answering systems) to automate knowledge extraction, summarization and recommendations.
Manage budgets, resource allocation and phased rollout plans for enterprise KM initiatives and ensure projects are delivered on time and within scope.
Design incentive structures and recognition programs to encourage contribution, curation and reuse of knowledge across the business.
Create standardized “lessons learned” programs and after-action review processes to capture insights from projects and operations, and embed improvements into KM repositories.
Coordinate with legal, compliance and records management to ensure knowledge retention policies meet regulatory obligations and support eDiscovery and audits.
Lead cross-functional workshops, knowledge mapping exercises and value-stream analyses to identify knowledge criticality, gaps, and prioritization for capture and preservation.
Develop content migration strategies and cleanup programs during platform consolidations to ensure legacy knowledge is preserved, tagged correctly and made discoverable.
Serve as the executive sponsor for knowledge-related enterprise initiatives, present KM metrics to the executive team, and influence leaders to adopt knowledge-first behaviors.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
Provide guidance to product and support teams on how to structure FAQs, KB articles and solution articles for optimal customer and agent findability.
Act as a liaison with HR to ensure KM inputs drive competency models and role-based learning content.
Advise product development and R&D on knowledge capture embedded into product lifecycle management.
Participate in user research and content usability testing to refine navigation, taxonomy and content design.
Support legal and audit teams with curated knowledge packages during compliance reviews.
Mentor and coach KM leaders across regions to ensure consistent global practices.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Enterprise Knowledge Management strategy development and program leadership — proven track record designing and scaling KM programs across large organizations.
Information architecture, taxonomy & metadata design — experience creating ontologies and tagging schemes that improve searchability and interoperability.
Experience with enterprise collaboration and KM platforms: SharePoint Online, Confluence, ServiceNow Knowledge, Bloomfire, Documentum, or similar content management systems.
Enterprise search and relevance tuning (ElasticSearch, Solr, Coveo, Google Cloud Search, Microsoft Search) and experience improving search metrics.
Familiarity with AI/NLP and knowledge graph technologies for automated extraction, entity resolution, semantic search, and question-answering systems.
Content governance, editorial workflows and publishing systems — implementing review cycles, SLAs and content quality controls.
Data analytics and reporting for KM — experience with Power BI, Tableau, Looker or native platform analytics to build KM dashboards and ROI models.
Records management, data privacy and compliance — knowledge of GDPR, CCPA and retention schedules as they apply to knowledge assets.
Project management and program delivery — agile and waterfall experience, ability to manage cross-functional programs, budgets and vendors.
Taxonomy and semantic enrichment tools (PoolParty, TopBraid, Smartlogic) and experience applying them to enterprise content.
Technical understanding of APIs, connectors, and content integrations to consolidate knowledge across systems and create a single source of truth.

Soft Skills

Strategic leadership and executive presence — ability to influence senior leaders and align KM to business strategy.
Strong stakeholder management and cross-functional collaboration skills across IT, HR, Legal, Product and Business units.
Exceptional written and verbal communication — can craft playbooks, training materials and executive presentations.
Change management and adoption expertise, including building champions networks and running global rollouts.
Coaching and team-building skills; ability to build high-performing KM teams and communities of practice.
Analytical mindset with a focus on metrics, experimentation and continuous improvement.
Customer-centric orientation — understanding internal and external user journeys to improve findability and time-to-answer.
Facilitation skills for workshops, after-action reviews, and knowledge mapping sessions.
Problem-solving and prioritization in complex, ambiguous environments.
Cultural sensitivity and experience operating in global, distributed organizations.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Information Science, Library Science, Computer Science, Business Administration, or related field.

Preferred Education:

Master’s degree (MLIS, MSc Information Management, MBA, or similar) or advanced certifications in Knowledge Management, Information Architecture or Digital Workplace.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Information Science / Library & Information Studies
Knowledge Management / Knowledge Engineering
Computer Science / Data Science
Business Administration / Organizational Development
Human-Centered Design / UX

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 10–15+ years of progressive experience in knowledge management, information architecture, content strategy, IT or related disciplines, with at least 5 years in a senior leadership or program director role.

Preferred:

Demonstrated experience leading enterprise KM transformations and delivering measurable improvements in search performance, time-to-productivity, support deflection, or project delivery.
Prior experience implementing or managing enterprise KM platforms (SharePoint, Confluence, ServiceNow, enterprise search vendors) and integrating AI-enabled search/assistant features.
Experience working in regulated industries (finance, healthcare, government, energy) where knowledge governance and retention requirements are stringent.
Certifications such as CKO/CKM training, Certified Knowledge Manager, PMP/Prince2, or Agile/Scrum certifications are a plus.