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Consortium for Service Innovation

Getting the Right People Involved

The first step is to identify and confirm an Executive Sponsor. The Executive Sponsor must have influence on those who will be impacted by the organizational change. It is typically a person holding a Senior VP or VP title: an executive whose organization includes the knowledge workers. The Executive Sponsor needs to have control of the budget for the KCS initiative and have accountability for the results. The Executive Sponsor acts as the KCS advocate with policy and process owners across the business including: Legal, Finance, HR, IT, and Product Development. While the Executive Sponsor is not a regular participant on the KCS Council, they should receive periodic briefings on the Council’s progress and they must support the effort by allocating resources and budget for the program.

The next step is to create a cross-functional and cross-geographic KCS Council. In addition to the KCS Program Manager, this team is composed of knowledge workers and management representatives from the domains that are adopting KCS, an IT Liaison, a Web Liaison, and if possible, a communications specialist. 

KCS Program Manager - Responsible for coordinating the adoption plan and the project plan, this person ideally holds a KCS v6 Practices certification from the Consortium for Service Innovation.

Knowledge workers and management representatives – Knowledge workers and management representing a cross-section of the knowledge domain(s), geographies, and, if applicable, outsource partners who will be involved in adopting KCS. 

IT Liaison - Responsible for driving the tool functionality, reporting, performance, and integration required to support KCS.

Web Liaison - Responsible for ensuring the organization's website protocol is included in the content standard and coordinating plans for self-service.

Participation on the KCS Council for the majority of the members is part-time. Members continue to be involved in their respective primary roles. In very large organizations some members of the KCS Council may be full-time. See the write up on the KCS Center of Excellence in Appendix B for details. 

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