Important Discussion for all Members on Leadership

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Original Message

From: Carl Jackson, posted on 2014/02/16

Hello KM4Dev,

We are now moving to the third topic of the focused conversations related to shaping the future of KM4Dev.

Community leadership in KM4Dev happens thanks to a self-managing and participatory collective of volunteers known as the Core Group. The purpose of the KM4Dev Core Group is that members contribute their time and energy towards supporting the needs of KM4Dev members and developing the community (for more info see core group TORs).

A challenge for our community is to ensure that community members feel encouraged to volunteer as Core Group members, are enabled to play a useful and gratifying part in collective leadership, and can leave in a transparent and healthy manner for the best of the community and of themselves. In other words, a crucial challenge for KM4Dev is Core Group succession management.

Community members Jasmin Suministrado and Benedict Rimando have led one of the IFAD-funded KM4Dev Futures studies looking at this challenge and have identified that the processes and systems for succession management are quite random and not well institutionalized. Indeed the ideal picture is far from the current reality.

We would like to ask the community to read Jasmin and Benedict’s study on Ideas for improving Core Group succession management in KM4Dev which has very interesting components:

  • Why this matters (in this community of practice as in any other)
  • The ideal picture and the reality of succession management - from the perspectives of a) a community member and b) a Core Group member.
  • Some suggestions (as mind maps) for each of the steps in succession management: Awareness building, matching needs & opportunities, recruitment and application, initiation, integration and performance, withdrawal and renewal.

Based on your reading of the study, we would love you to reflect on your own experiences in KM4Dev and in other communities, and build up this conversation by sharing your ideas for improving succession in the KM4Dev core group. Possible topics include:

  • What is your experience of leadership succession in informal groups and community organisations (including KM4Dev) as a volunteer leader or regular member?
  • Where do you think are the most immediate succession needs? At what phase described in Jasmin/Benedict’s piece of work, or otherwise?
  • What early wins and long term approaches to Core Group suggestion management can get us to a healthier and more transparent, more effective Core Group and community as a whole?

Thank you to Jasmin and Benedict for this important piece of work. Lets hear from you now.

Warm wishes,

Carl Jackson & Ewen Le Borgne

Contributors

All replies in full are available in the discussion page. Contributions received with thanks from:

Related Discussions

Anna Maria Ponce; Bendict Rimando; Carl Jackson; Dan Boom; Ewen Le Borgne; Jaap Pels; Jasmin Suministrado; John Emeka Akude; Liz Clarke; Lucie Lamoureux; Martina Hetzel; Nancy White; Pete Cranston; Philipp Grunewald; Riff Fullan; Sarah Cummings; Valerie Brown

Summary

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