The jobs boom is gone and so are some of the jobs. Employee concierges attending to the needs and wants of staff, event and promotion coordinators orchestrating lavish reward trips or performance sweepstakes, or executive chefs servicing dining rooms for the top brass have largely disappeared from corporate directories.

But some of the jobs that were especially hot in the '90s have survived, albeit in more limited numbers. Among these are the chief learning officer and chief knowledge officer.

Based largely on anecdotal observations, the Wall Street Journal in early 2003 noted that fewer than 20 percent of major U.S. corporations have CLOs or CKOs, vs. 25 percent at the height of the business boom. The implication was that with businesses cutting back during the years of recession, these were expendable roles.

Not if companies are thinking strategically.

The CLO is a lot more than the person responsible for organizational training programs. Tim Baldwin and Camden Danielson note in Business Horizons that a CLO's mission is to create a forum for dialogue on important issues in the firm (Federal Express), or to focus exclusively on developing leadership bench strength (Boeing).

Some CLOs are the agents of cultural transformation across their company. Their role is to unsettle the current order and trigger significant changes in employees' values and behaviors to fit the evolving strategy of the organization. For example, Wall Street's money managers had to shift into the client-management mode to grow new business during the investment banking downturn. In many cases, CLOs shepherded the change.

The CLO's role overlaps with the role of CKO since both have a large hand in accomplishing relevant cultural transformation. CKOs are in charge of capturing and disseminating knowledge throughout a company. With the volume of information exploding exponentially -- bordering on overload -- information filtering is one of the key challenges for CKOs.

It is the CKO's role to create an organizational discipline in which experienced practitioners routinely capture information, where users turn to internal information resources with new problems, where systems sift through volumes of data and enable easy search and retrieval of the relevant information, and where there is a culture of sharing despite unit barriers.

The role of the CKO is to create this culture and the learning and knowledge sharing systems that make it happen. The CKO also brings new thinking and best practices from the outside in, and pushes them throughout the organization to spark innovation and to enhance organizational capabilities.

Organizations that have an active innovation machine with frequent product launches must have a well-oiled learning culture. Dell introduces thousands of products each year and its work force must quickly learn the intricacies and features of new products. The employee learning element is an integral ingredient of each new product launch. Ironically, the role of CLO at Dell has been phased out because learning is so embedded in every organizational function, a necessity given the rapid pace of change.

In professional service organizations, effective knowledge management practices enable easy transfer of background research across overlapping client engagements. Other problems aside, Arthur Andersen was renowned for its knowledge management practices across its 360 global offices. The Andersen platform relied on adapted software with a searchable database, and all employees were trained in effective use of the knowledge management tools.

Knowledge capture is equally appropriate when a firm is hurting, for example, when sales are down and units need to share information and collaborate to win new customers. And during layoffs, these practices help retain some of the tacit knowledge that is about to walk out the door with the laid-off employee.

As partners in the business strategy, CLOs and CKOs also are moving into the domain of knowledge sharing with clients. Educating customers is part service, part sales strategy. Beyond providing a platform to highlight the company's products or services, knowledge sharing with customers enhances the business case for the client's dealings with the company.

The Pine Street Leadership Project, Goldman Sachs' learning center run by its CLO, Steve Kerr, builds relationships with Goldman clients, from IBM to Sony and ConocoPhillips. The value to these customers goes beyond the financial services. It includes knowledge transfer as part of a multifaceted strategic relationship with Goldman.

Every executive role must bring value to the business strategy. As long as CLOs and CKOs advance core strategic priorities, they're here to stay, boom or bust.