What's in a name?

It's interesting to ponder the corporate world of labels. I often struggle with defining what label I should wear because I use a wide variety of skills to solve problems effectively.

Who would I be without the accumulated knowledge I've had in my life? I always draw from various concepts to design systems. For example, when I was working on an artificial intelligence project in university, I combined ideas and techniques from Laban Dance Notation (which is used for human movement analysis), kinesiology, machine vision and animation to design a solution for automating inbetweening for cartoons. I use improv acting training to draw energy out of a group of people when facilitating analysis sessions. I use the PMBOK to help ensure there is enough discipline and communication during projects to ensure their accuracy and success across various stakeholders. I use Object Oriented Analysis ideas to help drive discussions with customers and draw out a meaningful interpretation of their issues and structure them into working models of solutions. I use my experience in architecture to describe how IT works. Understanding Marketing helps to ensure that you create products that are in demand. Plus, I use the accumulation of various techniques and tools that I've learned throughout a long career or business analysis, database analysis and system designs to be able to adapt as needed to whatever team I happen to find myself working with.

It's all about adapting and communicating using models that your audience can relate to. You need to dynamically adjust your techniques until you are sure that you have successfully connected to your audience and they are constructively engaged in the discussion. It also ensures that they are able to maximize their contribution because you have tapped into a way of communicating that will draw out the most salient points and information to improve the accuracy and completeness of the solution.

This diverse collection of knowledge and experience enables you to be able to adapt and communicate as required to diverse groups of people and furthermore, enables you to help them understand each other. This is the key to successful projects and efficiency within organizations.

I'm hoping that the new Bachelor of Knowledge Integration program at the University of Waterloo will raise awareness of the type of cross-functional problem-solving skills that are required to draw from many models to create the optimal innovative solution to a situation. Then I'll be able to proudly wear the Label of "Knowledge Integrator" and can dream of being free of label ambiguity in the corporate world.

What comes to your mind when you hear the term "Knowledge Integrator"?