2 The New Breed of Knowledge Workers

At the time of these writings, fall of 2011, the economy in United States is in a major downturn. Some analyst would say the country is in a recession, while others would disagree. Either way, the slowing economy, which transcends across the American borders into the European Union and beyond, is giving a new blow to knowledge worker-lead KM project teams.

Today's knowledge workers, and KM professionals for that matter, are been required to change their business structure and the way their KM implementations are managed to enable their projects to remain under budget, meet deadlines, and most important, pay off. Focusing on knowledge sharing, Internet based applications and virtual access to data, knowledge workers are emerging as a driving force in the collaborative implementation of KM. However, given the high risk for KM implementation failures, the new breed of knowledge workers required to lead such teams must have a multitude of skills, including business, technology, team-building, project management, communication skills and leadership in order to be successful.

In the words of Rebecca Barclay 13, these new breed of knowledge workers must possess vision, strategy, ambassadorial skills, and a certain je ne sais quoi. This is true especially when we consider the traditional methods of calculating return on investment (ROI), which are often ill-suited to measuring the strategic impact of KM applications and initiatives, in particular those applied to customer-facing systems such as customer relationship management (CRM). That's because KM can have a profound strategic impact on a company, far beyond improving processes and productivity. KM can fundamentally change the way a company view its business, its products and even its business opportunities.