I wanted to write a quick entry about an exciting announcement we made today at Knowledge Infusion, the creation and appointment of our first Chief Performance Officer Cassie Fireman.
For the past 4 years, Knowledge Infusion in it's day to day consulting with enterprise clients and vendors as well as it's day to day operations methodology has believed in the approach that people truly have a direct impact on overall business outcomes. Like most organizations, KI has had silos of HR, Sales, Marketing and Delivery as separate functions each reporting directly to a CEO. In 2009, we have decided to change that model to truly match where the world is going today and prove the value that HR has on the business, not just preach it like most.
The role of Chief Performance Officer at Knowledge Infusion will combine the functions of HR, Operations and Service Delivery which includes customer satisfaction into a function that allows us to measure directly the impact that our talent is having on our customers. At the same time, it helps us ensure that we are rewarding and developing talent in a way that is directly aligned to the ongoing needs of our customers and the future vision for the business and meets one of KI's operating goals in 2009 being the best place to work in the industry.
The single point of alignment is something that we at Knowledge Infusion have been working with our customers to help position and grow for the past few years specifically and out of our CPO role comes the real-time ability to deliver metrics, key performance indicators and measurements to adjust our business to whatever the markets and their respective adjustments serve our way.
Cassie joins that KI Executive Team from an industry near and dear to my heart as it is where I got my start, the hospitality/gaming industry. As someone who was raised in this industry and watching the amazing processes that industry has in place around metrics and measurement, Cassie brings to our team a unique set of traits that include a background in HR and HR processes, a true understanding of Operations as well as a focus on quality and customer satisfaction, all major elements of the KI Experience. For any organization today, the blending of the HR function directly into the business with a combined view of HR, Operations and Delivery should be a priority instead of moving HR to the back burner.
While we have been working on brining Cassie and the Chief Performance Officer role into KI for the past 3 months, it was very interesting to us to see President Elect Barack Obama create this role aligned with his plans to run the United States for the next 4 years. I firmly believe that we are entering into an era of transparency, accountability and operational discipline that will make this role even more important for all types of organizations in the years to come.
I wanted to provide two links that I believe do a good job explaining this role and help you understand the role that Chief Performance Officers will have for a long time to come:
- Josh Bersin does a great job discussing the CPO role and the impact it will have on HR and the business. Great piece Josh and love the fact that you see tremendous value in such a role. Here is a link to Josh's blog entry on the CPO role.
- Our press release from this morning discussing Cassie's role within KI and the impact it will have on both our internal organization and our customers. We already have many customers that will be leveraging Cassie to help "re-think" the way they craft and organize their HR function. See link to press release here.
2009 will be one of the most important years for most businesses in the world. While it is easy to market your way to success and while it is easy to save your way to success, one of the most difficult functions is to continue to mature your organization during an economic downturn. Every organization deals with this in different ways and this should be a major part of your plan, such as it is Knowledge Infusion's to make the organization stronger, more agile and ready to deliver to our community in unparalleled ways.
Welcome to the KI family Cassie and encourage others in our community to explore how to continue to increase organizational performance through linking these processes together in a more unified manner.
Another infusion of knowledge...
