Institute for Healthcare Improvement

Background

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) is an independent not-for-profit organization helping to lead the improvement of health care throughout the world.  Founded in 1991 and based in Cambridge, MA, IHI is a catalyst for change, cultivating innovative concepts for improving patient care and implementing programs for putting those ideas into action.  Thousands of health care providers participate in IHI’s groundbreaking work.

Position Title:  Director of Knowledge Systems

Position Summary: 

The Director of Knowledge Systems will develop a vision for and implement a multi-year plan to deliver a world class knowledge management approach for IHI, starting with a focus on IHI’s new website. The Director will provide leadership for the ongoing knowledge management activities as delivered to constituents through IHI.org and other dissemination channels as needed. Reporting to the Senior Vice President of Operations, the Director will develop and oversee the processes by which IHI harvests, organizes, and disseminates knowledge through the IHI website, and other mediums.

The Director of Knowledge Systems will be responsible for gathering organization-wide input on building a knowledge management function and setting up the infrastructure to allow for the creation, coding and management of the organization’s information and knowledge to feed to IHI.org and other communication channels. The Director will understand the complexities of setting up a coding system to tag all organizational information so that it can be easily mined and pulled from a database. The Director will also help IHI understand knowledge management and its advantages to the organization and its constituents. With that understanding, the Director will lead efforts to extract insights and experience from IHI team members and other affiliates to build the organization’s knowledge and intellectual capital.

Primary Position Responsibilities:

·         Create a vision for knowledge management at IHI.

·         Develop implementation plans for short and long term goals, with many practical milestones to ensure annual progress toward long term, sustainable knowledge management and a knowledge culture.

·         Develop fiscal year operating plans and budgets to run the knowledge management function and help secure necessary funding from the Strategy Team, Board of Directors and other potential external funders.

·         Work in partnership with leaders and staff within each IHI portfolio to define and understand their roles as knowledge workers. Then with the leaders build knowledge management sub plans for each portfolio and then assist in the ongoing successful implementation of those plans.

·         Lead a cross-functional team to represent interests across the organization and ensure ongoing support and buy-in for the longer term vision and for the implementation plan.

·         In partnership with IHI staff, create and monitor organization-wide knowledge management metrics.  Together with responsible knowledge leaders provide updates to IHI senior management and others on the overall knowledge management initiative and on the execution of knowledge management sub plans within IHI. 

• Lead activities to extract intuition and experience from individuals and code it so that it can be found easily in the knowledge base; help the organization evolve to a knowledge culture. 

·         Organize, coordinate and review IHI’s work to catalyze, create, scan for, capture and present knowledge. Promote knowledge management within IHI, to funders and to constituents as an integral part of building the intellectual assets of individuals in healthcare.

·         Oversee the user interface design so that the search function and the information and knowledge returned are set up on IHI.org in a way that is easy to navigate and understand.

·         Build intelligent search capabilities to recommend other information and knowledge that may be of interest to the user based on the search conducted.

·         Work with external data and information vendors to evaluate content and negotiate solutions that are appropriate for IHI.org.  Seek out new processes and technology and maintain flexibility to revise and update the plan as the organization evolves.

·         Stimulate and monitor ‘ignited’ blogs, wikis and discussion threads at IHI. Commission and corral internal and external experts to contribute to the discussions, including spurring others to challenge other postings.

·         Understand IHI.org’s relative popularity in the healthcare knowledge space and present plans for elevating that popularity.

·         Supervise and mentor knowledge management team members, both in direct and indirect reporting relationships.

·         Supervise, organize and strategize the video group at IHI, tightly integrate video into the knowledge management continuum

Position Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Knowledgeable and skilled at knowledge management, knowledge coding and cataloguing content
• Ability to teach and educate others about knowledge management; ability to change the “knowledge culture”
• Knowledgeable in the creation of websites that link to knowledge and information databases, and in developing and designing a user interface
• Very skilled at presenting to and communicating with senior leadership, as well as all organizational members
• Skilled in partnering and co-leading projects to reach successful outcomes
• Ability to operate at the strategic and visionary level and also at the detailed implementation level
• Skilled at planning complex, multi-year, organization-wide initiatives, including the ability to accurately project financial and human resources to meet objectives and solve problems, and managing budgets

·         Ability to create original concepts/theories

·         Knowledge of not-for-profit leadership

·         Ability to multi-task and handle diverse high-pressure environments

·         Ability to speak with individuals/groups to inspire a vision and relay the skill set and confidence that the vision will be successfully carried out

·         Strong customer service orientation necessary

Position Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree required; Master’s degree desirable
• Ten plus years in building and leading functions within organizations, including the following requirements:
• Experience with knowledge management, knowledge databases and knowledge cultures
• Extensive project management experience
• Minimum of 5 years’ experience managing others

Interested candidates should send a cover letter and resume with salary history to:

employment@...

Institute for Healthcare Improvement

Vice President, Human Resources

20 University Road, 7^th Floor

Cambridge, MA  02138

Kiette Tucker

Institute for Healthcare Improvement

20 University Road, 7th Floor

Cambridge, MA 02138

Phone:  617-301-4963

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