Mission accomplished: Convincing indicators to assess impact of networks found? #kmers

Ever since I embarked on knowledge management and knowledge sharing journey, I've been struggling to find convincing metrics to assess impact of KM/KS activities. In October 2009, I wrote this blogpost: "KM search and rescue operation: Looking for intelligent and KM-enabled indicator!" and got some good feedback. But it still was not quite the convincing indicators I was looking for.

What do you I mean by convincing indicators?  I mean metrics that make sense, metrics that show progress, metrics that combine both qualitative and quantitative aspects.

I am not a great indicator fan. I believe indicators detract attention from the bigger scope. They are very much like this faceless street artist.

Nonetheless, the type of business we are in, requires that we measure our activities and show the impact we are making. And ever since when I've been trying to find convincing indicators for KM/KS related activities.

So you can imagine my excitement while reading Collaboration  by Morten T. Hansen  to come across convincing indicators to measure the impact of networks!!! Hansen's book is based on years of research. The book itself is a gem, especially the last chapter where he takes you on a personal journey and acting as coach shows you how to become a collaborative leader.

In this book, Hansen argues that the goal of collaboration is to achieve greater results. He identifies the following as barriers to collaboration:

• not-invented here barrier
• factors contributing to hoarding
• search barrier
• transfer barrier

He makes the case that no collaboration is better than bad collaboration. He argues that for collaboration to happen leaders need to unify people and to do that they:

• must craft a compelling unifying goal that makes people commit to a cause greater than their own individual goals
• should pair competition on the outside of the company with collaboration on the inside. People who unite to compete against a common foe are juiced up by competing and by collaborating
• should not talk competition, but collaboration and collaboration for results

Then he goes on to explain how to build nimble networks and it is in this chapter that I had an aha moment. I finally came across a convincing way to measure the impact of networks.

Hansen starts of by saying:

• too much networking may be distractive
• networking is costly because it takes time and effort to nurture relationships (this is if you are serious about it and want to do it well)
• for networks to be valuable, their benefits need to be greater than the costs
• secret of networking is to build result-based networks based on disciplined collaboration

He then proceeds to say that networks are good for identifying opportunities to take something further and to capture value and in doing so, effective networks need to reduce the collaboration barriers mentioned above. 

Hansen provides a framework with six network rules, which I see as great indicators to measure success of KM/KS networks. The first four are used to assess the impact of network vis-a-vis identifying opportunities and the last two to capture the value of networks.

• build outward, not inward: to overcome the not-invented barrier, networks need to build many more outward ties than inward ones. One of the indicators is to measure how much undisciplined collaboration there is. Is there too much networking, too much butterfly syndrome, jumping from one thing to another without concluding anything?
• build diversity, not size: to overcome search barrier you need to build a network based on diversity. In networks numbers do not count. What is important is the diversity of connections. You need connections that tap into diverse things and diverse people. This is what leads to more innovative products. Hansen challenges us that when we engage in professional relationship we should ask ourselves what diversity does this new contact bring me. He then proceeds to say that disciplined collaboration means adding contacts that bring more diversity into your network. And this too is a great indicator to measure the impact of networks
• build weak ties, not strong ones: now how counterintuitive can one get. And yet, there is so much wisdom in this statement and this too is a superb indicator. Hansen makes the point that weak ties prove to be much more helpful in networking because they form bridges to world we do not walk within. His argument is that strong ties are to worlds we know and he is very right about this. Building weak ties contributes to overcome the search barrier
• use bridges, not familiar faces: good networking means knowing who the real bridges are and to use them. Bridges are typically long-tenured people who have worked in different places and know about a broad range of topics. A successful network needs to have enough people performing bridging role. Using bridges and not familiar faces is another tactic to overcome the search barrier
• swarm the target; do not go it alone: Hansen's advice here is if you believe the target identified in a search may not be forthcoming, enlist the help of others to convince the target. In other words swarm the target with influencers, people who are in position to exert influence and get your contacts to work on your behalf, appeal to common good and invoke reciprocity. If you want to measure the impact of your network, you should ask yourselves, how many times you've turned to your network members and asked them to do something on your behalf and how many times they did it for you. Hansen associates this as a remedy for the hoarding barrier
• switch to strong ties; do not rely on weak ones: he finishes of his six network rules by providing a remedy to transfer barrier and making the point that to ensure easy transfer you need strong ties between team members so that they can trust each other and transfer complicated knowledge, which in KM language translates to good old tacit knowledge

I must say, I am thrilled to have finally found convincing and sound indicators for measuring the impact of networks. I now believe it is possible to find equally good indicators for other KM/KS aspects. The dilemma is whether anyone old person do so, or whether we need another Morten Hansen with years of research experience to come up with equally convincing indicators.

Bets are open!!! And I would love to hear your views and feedback on these indicators.

What is cooking for the Second Global AgriKnowledge Share Fair #sfrome: 26-29 September 2011 at #IFAD HQ

When I interviewed Willem Bettink - one of the co-organizers of the Second Global AgriKnowledge Share Fair just before he left for his well deserved summer holidays, I could not imagine that we would all have an intense working holiday.

As it turns out, those of us on the road and those in the office, have been glued to our computers, Blackberries and emails. And we've done so with gusto and pleasure!

So, you are wondering what the share fair steering committee is up to? Well, apart from being glued to our electronic devices, the organizing committee composed of colleagues from Bioversity, CGIAR, CTA, FAO, IFAD,and WFP,  is finalizing the share fair programme which promises to be an exciting four day event, taking place from 26-29 September 2011 at IFAD headquarters. 


We love suspense, so you need to wait a bit more to get the full-fledged programme, but in the meantime just to whet your appetite here are some of the highlights of this unique event:

• a number of prominent personalities will share their inspiring experiences and insights 
• colleagues from all over the world in over 150 sessions, will share their knowledge and wisdom on a variety of rural development and agriculture related topics such as: food security, climate change, environmental friendly innovations, emerging trends in use of ICTs, new technologies and innovative agricultural and farming practices, market access, water, livestock, knowledge sharing, networks and communities of practice
• participants can benefit from numerous training sessions on knowledge sharing methods, social media tools, emerging trends and lessons learnt 
• stunning art for AIDS exhibit
• lots and lots of social reporting - you will see knowledge sharing methods and social media tools put to practice.... We WALK the TALK!!

We'll be webcasting the plenary sessions and a team of social reporters will bring you live this four day event. We'll be using a number of social media channels, such as Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and more. Make sure you follow #sfrome. 

And we hope to see you all in Rome. If you do not want to miss this event, please make sure you register. For now goodbye and good night. A presto as they say in Italian!

Beer-wine assist: An innovative way of sharing knowledge

Last night at the East and Southern Africa knowledge management workshop, Peter Ballantyne introduced an innovative way to share knowledge - a beer-wine assist!!!

The beer-wine assist was a peer assist in the form of an open space. Now, that is real innovation. Combining two knowledge sharing methods into one!!! And we covered the following topics:

• learning more about linking local learners
• how to document and package success stories
• learning routes
• communication and knowledge management strategies

This morning when the group shared their discussions in the openspace, it was heart warming to see how much they had learnt and internalized in just 60 minutes. And this evening when we did the after action review, participants indicated that they found the openspace very useful. 

So, the peer-assist innovation turned out to be a smashing success. Must have been a combination of great participants and the beer and wine!!

This morning we had a great conversation on how a good meeting culture is essential for creating a conducive environment for learning and sharing. To instill a better meeting etiquette and to ensure that everyone gets the most of any meeting, the group talked about the importance of:

• preparing for the meeting
• sticking to schedule
• staying focused
• holding meetings only when there is a real need to do so
• inviting the right people
• distributing background documents before the meeting
• having a facilitator
• involving all the participants in the conversation
• having concrete action points and follow-up mechanism
• debriefing after the meeting, asking ourselves what worked and what could have gone better

There was a lengthy debate on the role of facilitator versus a chairperson. I am not sure we reached any agreement on this issue. Suffice to say that tomorrow, we'll be dedicating some more time on talking about how to conduct meetings in an appreciative manner and unpacking further the roles of facilitator and chairperson.

During the course of the workshop, the country teams discussed the challenges and opportunities of mainstreaming knowledge management within their projects, at government level and at grassroot and farmer level. As the day came to a close, they shared their draft action plans for the next 12 months.

Here are some of the challenges they committed to address and overcome:

• identify a  KM champion at leadership/government level
• develop an integrated knowledge management and learning strategy
• capture information in a meaningful manner
• institutionalize knowledge management and learning in a sustainable manner
• create a culture of learning and sharing
• develop capacity for knowledge management and learning in a sustainable manner
• convince projects and government of the importance of knowledge management and learning
• identify the structure and institutional arrangement required in the project to make KM work
• promote exchange visits as their are valuable learning and sharing mechanism

I felt privileged to have participated in this workshop, and I learnt a lot from the wide range of experience of our colleagues in the field. 

I sat in awe when I heard the insightful comments of participants such as: "KM and learning is not a project", "We cannot do is not an option", "we need to consider feedback as a gift", and "KM is not about creating a website, but it is about transforming and changing the way we do business".

This group has come a long way. I guess their next frontier would be to expand their partnerships and networks so that they can benefit from a much wider knowledgebase, and to share their knowledge, experience and achievements with others.

I am sure sooner rather later we'll be ableto instill a culture of learning sharing not only in IFAD-funded projects, but also at grassroot, government level and beyond. And when that happens we can pat ourselves on the back and be proud of our work. For sure, that day is in the very near future!

IFADAfrica - facilitating KM&L in project meetings

View more presentations from IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development

IFADAfrica Rwanda -Presentation of country experience

View more presentations from IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development

IFADAfrica - Zambia country experience progress report

View more documents from IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development

IFAD’s knowledge management efforts in East and Southern Africa bear fruits and add value to rural development activities

The third IFADAfrica knowledge management learning workshop kicked off on 20 June 2011 in a sunny and relatively chilly Lusaka.

The event brings together 60 participants from Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia.

I had had the privilege and honour of attending the startup workshop of IFADAfrica two years ago and I must say, I was delighted to see the progress made by my East and Southern Africa colleagues in mainstreaming knowledge management (KM) in their activities.

What struck me most, was the fact that some countries had managed to work with ministries, to build KM capacity at ministerial level. s a result, today government representatives were in a better position to understand and appreciate the value of knowledge management. This has resulted in reducing redundancies, improving the flow of information and increasing efficiencies.


As a KM practitioner, I get excited when I see how KM activities have led to influencing policy. This morning, listening to my Zambian colleagues how thanks to their KM efforts, they had managed to influence the development of the national rural finance, put a smile on my lips. They had done a knowledge audit and used the results to inform government which then developed the national rural finance strategy.

During the last two days, participants shared how they had mainstreamed KM in their activities. There was general consensus that when knowledge management is embedded within the project, that is when it has the biggest impact.

It was refreshing to hear that there was a general understanding on the importance of KM being a common thread throughout the entire project cycle: starting with project design, through out project implementation to instill a culture of knowledge sharing and learning, to continuously and systematically capture and share the learning and lessons.

This is why, East and Southern Africa colleagues are now increasingly including knowledge management in the design of new projects and programmes. I guess we can call these projects rural development 2.0 projects!

East and Southern Africa knowledge management evolving framework

One of the objectives of the KM activities in East and Southern Africa is to make sure that government and project staff, stakeholders and partners understand and appreciate what is a knowledge management and learning system. This has lead to an interesting evolving KM framework, which at its heart focuses on learning and adapting to continuously improve and increase the impact of IFAD-funded projects and programmes.
What this framework does, is to link and create cross linkages between learning adaptation, information management, communication and innovation.

This is why they’re putting in place sound information management mechanisms to capture, document and store information. They’re adopting learning oriented monitoring and evaluation and as a result they should be able to continuously analyze information, assess progress and adapt.

Another key component of the framework is communication, which ranges from systematic sharing of information, communication within and among teams, instilling a culture of giving and receiving feedback, to communicating with stakeholders, packaging content in a compelling manner for advocacy purposes and increasing IFAD visibility.

One of the objectives of KM is to innovate, scale-up and bring about change and transformation. Thus, the need to instill a culture of appreciation for new ideas, culture of sourcing new ideas and creating the right environment to experiment with new ideas.

The ESA KM framework has adopted simple principles such as building capacity of project staff, instilling a learning and sharing culture, continuously improving processes, promoting south-south/exchange visits. To the maximum extent possible they are trying to use existing structure and avoid reinventing the wheel. And in the words of Dick Siame, IFAD country presence officer, “making sure government warms up and buys in to the KM agenda”.

As I am writing this blogpost colleagues are discussing the importance of collaboration, breaking the silos, and linkages between knowledge management and monitoring and evaluation.

We’re reporting live from the workshop on Twitter. Follow #esakm. Have look at the pictures from the event on Facebook and please share your comments and views on this blog, on Facebook and on Twitter. For IFAD colleagues at HQ, post your comments and feedback on Yammer.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

A conversation with Etienne Wenger about Communities of Practice…

by Willem Bettink

On Tuesday morning some 20 colleagues from FAO, WFP and IFAD gathered in the Qatar centre at IFAD for an informal conversation with Etienne who (upon Roxi‘s request) had volunteered his spare time in Rome before traveling on to Portugal.

Etienne is a practitioner, writer on CoP, Networks, a researcher of learning and much more! I encourage you to visit his website and read for example an article about Communities of Practice (http://www.ewenger.com/theory/) and many other interesting articles and publications.

Etienne started the conversation by telling us that the term CoP was created while he was studying apprenticeship as a learning model. He said, usually we think of apprenticeship as a relationship between a novice and a master. His studies of apprenticeship revealed a more complex set of social relationships through which learning takes place. It was not the master but fellow travellers and more advanced apprentices that were providing learning. This sounds very similar to what PROCASUR has been elaborating in its learning routes methodology.

We asked him what makes a CoP? Etienne referred to the three core characteristics that are crucial: which domain or what is this CoP about- its identity or shared interest of the members ; which community –given the domain or shared practices who are the partners to be engaged given their relevance to the domain; and which practices- members of a CoP have to agree on a focus –their shared practices-stories ,tools ,ways of solving problems. These practices should create “value” for people through conversation and other activities.

Most CoPs come to life by having a “core group” of practitioners who are willing to invest some of their energy to the CoP (Let’s not forget that supporting a CoP is no one’s first job!!). A CoP requires commitment or accountability to develop the practices of a domain to make it succeed. The core group can provide a learning leadership –-not to direct the CoP or projecting its ideas on how it should be, but being as leaders open to the community to improve one’s own practices. A key ingredient and motivator is the willingness and interest to learn together, from each other, to improve capabilities and practices in the domain.

Quite a few of us asked how we should/could keep a CoP active. As in a human being the “rhythm” or energy level of each CoP varies-thus there is no prescription or model to follow. Some CoP may meet only a once a year in an f2f -meeting which satisfies their interests and needs. Others interchange very intense interactions over shorter periods with more regular and less intense forms of engagement. To keep energy in a CoP it is important that the core group is clear about what energizes the community. Every now and then one may create a PULL to this energy - in other word attract people in what engages them in conversation about their practice. An example of such a pull activity is for example a case clinic- a member of the CoP present a concrete problem on which I got stuck and for which I seek advice from the CoP.

For me a very valuable observation was when Etienne said “the point of knowledge management is to develop our strategic capabilities that we need to succeed in our work”. As such a CoP -a learning partnership with relevant partners- is to focus on strategic capabilities critical for our work.

And I ask myself how far our CoPs are helping us to develop the strategic capabilities to succeed in our mission?

Humans beings prefer messy coherence, says Dave Snowden. Make sure you watch Dave's lecture at IFAD

On 28 February we had the honour, privilege and pleasure of having Dave Snowden with us. Dave was in town for a Rugby match, and we decided to try our luck and ask him to visit us and give a talk on Linear versus complexity: A new thinking paradigm for the development world and his Cynefin framework.

When Dave accepted to our invitation, I thought to my self, Oh My God, we'll have Dave Snowden, a leading knowledge management figure coming to IFAD.

In the development world, we do not get that often someone who embodies exceptional intellectual ability, creativity and originality. In other words, we do not have geniuses visiting us that often!

Dave managed to keep the audience in a complete state of awe for more than an hour and twenty minutes. I must admit I had never seen my colleagues so focused and listening so attentively to a talk.  Every single sentence Dave uttered was packed with at least five profound, new and revolutionary concepts. There was no way one could jot down all the concepts and internalize them before Dave moved on to his next sentence.

Dave inspired, challenged and left us speechless. At the end of his lecture, for the rest of the day and even today are heads are still spinning. Colleagues are replaying the lecture and taking their time to internalize Dave's new thinking paradigm.



Many of you in the virtual world followed us via webcast. For those who missed this unique event, Dave was kind enough to agree that we could post the recording. Make sure you watch it so that you can live our same experience.

I am also including some of the tweets from the superb IFAD social reporting team and other equally reat social reporters both in and outside the room! And make sure you check out Luca Servo's blogpost: The Cynefin framework.

Tweets from Dave Snowden lecutre at IFAD on linear versus complexity: a new thinking paradigm for the development world

View more documents from IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Dear Dave, once again, thank you for making our Monday morning such a unique and rewarding experience. We look forward to welcoming you very soon in Rome and at IFAD!



Here is a random selection of Dave's soundbites

We manage the evolutionary potential of the present 

People will share knowledge if they see you need it. Nobody will codify knowledge in advance of that need 

Communities of practice lost their relevance 5 years ago!

I use Twitter more than Google these days. Human language gives content and context that a search engine cannot match

Failures imprint more than successes

Tacit knowledge is not always enough to make the right decisions

Taxonomy is like taxidermy

Photo gallery

IFAD’s KM self-assessment: Where are we and where do we want to be

For five days, the austere and quiet Qatar Information Centre radically changed its appearance! The empty and lonely rooms were energized by a continuous flow of people. The centre became a meeting point where colleagues congregated to have a conversation and share their stories.

Every day the bare window panes came to life with beautiful drawings, colourful paper and post-its telling the story of IFAD’s knowledge management and knowledge sharing journey. In a way they reminded me of the Peruvian “talking maps”. After all, all these artefacts were telling the story of where we started, where we are and where we would like to be…. So indeed they were talking maps!

The process
Let’s start from the beginning. Just before the Christmas holidays, the KM core team in consultation with the KM community of practice agreed that it was time to assess and reflect on the implementation of IFAD’s knowledge management strategy. Using last year’s self-assessment as a benchmark, we decided to reuse Parcell and Collinson’s KM self-assessment framework (LINK). We agreed that we needed a KM practitioner to help us with the self-assessment and got in touch with our mentor Nancy White.

Nancy and the core team had a number of teleconferences to organize the week. To set the stage and get some insight, the core team conducted numerous one-on-one interviews which were used as an input to the self-assessment exercise.

Over the course of the week we held six different sessions with a total of 50 colleagues from all over the organization and used a variety of knowledge sharing methods such as story telling, world café, after action review. It was amazing how everyone enjoyed working with these knowledge sharing methods and appreciated their utility and value. I believe the informality of the conversations allowed a lot of things which otherwise would have remained hidden to surface.

We started off on Monday afternoon with a group of 10 network and thematic group leaders. These guys acted as guinea pigs and we learnt a lot from their sessions. We used their feedback and comments to shape up the subsequent sessions.

Tuesday was an intense day. We had three sessions, starting off with a mixed group of colleagues from programme management department and communications division. The lunch session was with country programme managers and technical advisers. And we finished the day with a group of colleagues from finance, administration, communications and human resources.

On Wednesday we had a revealing conversation with our outposted Viet Nam country programme manager and the Viet Nam knowledge management officer. In the afternoon we had a session with line managers and our new knowledge management champion, Henock Kifle.

Thursday was a reflection day and a day for Nancy to have bilateral meetings with Henock and Kevin. And finally on Friday we brought together everyone to do some “weaving” and to share the outcome and findings of the week.

Mashing up story telling and Parcell’s KM self-assessment framework
During each session, participants were asked to tell a story of how in 2009 they had applied knowledge sharing to their work. We put our new toy – the cool Flipcam – to work and immortalized these stories. We now have to iron-out a small technical issue so that we can make the videos available.

In telling their story, they were asked talk about who they shared the knowledge with, what knowledge management and/or knowledge sharing methods and approaches they used, what was their biggest challenges and what did they learn. Everyone found story telling a compelling way of sharing their knowledge.

Once they told their story, they were asked to use the KM self-assessment matrix and identify the level of maturity of their story and which of the 8 competencies best resonated with their story.

Creating a space to mingle, share and learn from each other
Over the course of the week, I heard 40 different stories and amazingly enough only one story was repetitive. I observed people as they told their stories and I must admit it was a rewarding experience. It was great to see people’s faces lit as they were telling their stories. I got the impression that they were so happy to have finally found someone who was giving them their undivided attention. It was amazing how everyone listened carefully to each other’s story.

What was equally amazing was that in each group, hardly anyone knew about their colleagues’ stories and when the storyteller presented his/her challenge, everyone started chiming in and providing advice and guidance based on their experience and knowledge. In one of the groups a colleague said: “I heard so many interesting stories, it is reassuring because it made me realize that we are all in the same boat”. By sharing their stories, they suddenly realized that they had lots of things in common!

This made me realize how we still lack a space for colleagues to come together face-to-face so that they can share their stories, challenges and opportunities and learn from each other.

I know we all have our informal networks and people who we use to bounce off ideas. What we’re lacking is a corporate culture of sharing and learning and a culture of sharing across functions, across divisions and departments.

I believe there is something deeper that what meets in the eye…. We use our informal networks because we trust the network members, because we know they care about us and will take the necessary time to listen to us and help us. We also do not expect them to necessarily agree with us, and we do not get on the defensive when they challenge us.

Reflecting on all the conversations during this week made me think, how seldom we walk to someone else’s office – especially someone outside of our immediate workgroup, division or department – to pick their brain or share a challenge or an achievement.

So I kept asking myself what is preventing us from expanding these informal networks so that we can leverage the knowledge of other colleagues and peers. Is it because we live in the false assumption that our challenge is unique to us or is it because we do not want to ‘disturb’ our colleagues knowing how busy they are or because we are afraid to ask for help.

I know we have brainstorming sessions and we have a culture of meeting, but I often ask myself whether our current work practices and processes are knowledge enabled. For example, how often do we go to meetings and come out saying “Gee that was a useful meeting, I learnt a lot and had an opportunity to share what I know”. How often do we experience mutual learning? How often do we say ‘I do not know, I need to learn’ and how often do we say ‘I do not know and I do not need to know’? Finally what is preventing us from taking time to stop, reflect and share what we’ve learnt before embarking on the next project and/or activity?

Level of KM maturity
In our wrap-up session on Friday morning, we asked the participants to use the KM self-assessment framework to indicate the KM maturity level. It was good to see that for most of the competencies the collective wisdom ranked our KM maturity at “action” level. I believe that this year contrary to last year there was more awareness about what knowledge management and knowledge sharing is all about. This makes me believe that this year’s assessment reflects much more the reality.

Reflecting back on the week, I now firmly believe that the strategy has fulfilled its mission. As Nancy put it, developing the KM strategy helped us to become aware of knowledge management and knowledge sharing. The strategy itself was a reaction to a need and by implementing it we entered the action mode. Now, we need to consistently apply it so that it becomes our way of working. We know that some are applying but we’re not all applying at the same time and that the application waxes and wanes. We also know that there are isolated and small pockets where KM/KS is the way of work.

Tension between operations and service divisions and organizational silos
During the course of the week time and again colleagues talked about the vertical and horizontal silos. Everyone acknowledged that while some sharing happens within work units, this is not necessarily the case between and among work units, divisions and departments. So we agreed more horizontal sharing need to happen so that we can all learn from each other – and this “all” is not just operations colleague, but everyone.

Colleagues identified that there is a divide between operations and the rest of the house. As someone put it eloquently, service divisions are not considered as strategic partners. Actually, even worse, they are often seen as a nuisance.

At the same time, it was interesting to see the different perceptions and how people perceived their role as knowledge worker and the application of knowledge differently. There is a quite a bit of different interpretations of “packaging knowledge” to make it digestible and accessible (not only in terms of finding it but most importantly of understanding it!).

We all agreed that KM is messy, we need to do a lot of connecting and weaving.

By the end of the week, the knowledge management and knowledge sharing map at IFAD looked like this:

Soundbits, comments, observationsDuring the course of the week colleagues made very insightful remarks and at the same time they raised a number of issues. I am listing these in bullet format. This list is by no means comprehensive and I urge KM core team, Nancy and all those who participated to add and amend it as deemed appropriate.

• A mistake made is knowledge gained
• Knowledge dies if it is not shared
• There are many untold stories, how can we make sure they are shared and heard
• We need to move away from the blame culture
• Organization needs to accept failure… the important thing is that we learn from it
• By sharing knowledge we realize we’re not alone
• We have too many formal things to do and do not have time to do KM stuff
• KM is not part of our core function
• Knowledge is driven by hierarchy and this hinders natural knowledge flow
• There is little or no incentive to share
• Distilling information is a challenge
• Humility to learn form others
• Storage and retrieval is deemed as a general service function
• Tools are important to make sure knowledge flows
• Trust and interpersonal relationships can help or hinder knowledge flow
• Need to communicate more horizontally to foster knowledge sharing
• Need to capture scattered knowledge
• Need to acknowledge that everyone’s knowledge counts
• Need to understand that systems, tools and knowledge assets serve different purpose and needs, which means that if I am not using a system, this does not mean it is useless as it probably is useful for someone else
• How can we better digest, mine and make sense of knowledge and lessons emerging from our activities
• Reward KM initiatives, be it that they are corporate or at grassroot level
• Make our corporate processes knowledge enabled

What next
To move ahead, I believe we need to better understand how relationships between people and groups can facilitate or hinder knowledge flows. In the manager group, it was interesting to see how each one perceived KM differently and made assumptions on what was important for someone else or what others needed or wanted. In the conversation with Atsuko – who is one of our few outposted country programme managers – I was shocked to find out that she was not consulted in formulating the guidelines for outposted CPMS and equally shocked that she was not regularly in touch with and consulting with her other outposted colleagues.

I think the time we’ve reached a juncture where we can benefit from a social network analysis (SNA). SNA is about understanding who people seek information and knowledge from, whom they share their information and knowledge with. In contrast to an organization chart which shows formal relationships, an SNA chart shows informal relationships - who knows whom and who shares information and knowledge with whom. It therefore allows visualizing and understanding the relationships that can either facilitate or impede knowledge creation and sharing.

The other big next steps are:

• Creating an enabling environment where everyone’s knowledge is valued and create a space for colleagues to come together, share and learn from each other
• Embed knowledge management in strategic framework 2011-2014 to ensure that we can both bring in and generate the knowledge we need
• Review corporate processes and make them more KM enabled
• Examine information management flows and take stock of information assets

A personal reflection
Last week was a rewarding experience. I not only learnt a lot, I also appreciated the importance of weaving and connecting strands. I must admit I am left with more questions and doubts than answers. But as Bertrand Russell said: “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” So anyone out there willing and ready to help…. Give a shout!