Moving people's focus away from KM "products" to KM or KS processes

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Revision as of 13:36, 14 September 2012 by Lucie Lamoureux (Talk | contribs)

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Original Message

From: Lucie Lamoureux, posted on 2012/09/10

Hi everyone,

You may recall that back in April, Nancy White started a discussion around a question posed via video by Gauri Salokhe from FAO. This was to kick off our New Discussion Series, where a KM4dev member poses a question and for two weeks we collect the responses, then ask the "asker" to react to the answers we received and then update the KM4dev wiki with this information.

For this new installment, Charles Dhewa and I have the pleasure to welcome Chase Palmeri from IFAD. A big thanks to her for doing this and to Charles for taking the video when he was in Rome! So here is Chase's question:

How do we move people's focus away from KM "products" to KM/KS processes? You can view the short clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYlrKmV3S6c

After you have a look, please reply to this message. The discussion will run until Friday Sept 21 so please chime in!

Thanks to all, Lucie, for Charles and Chase

Contributors

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

Jaap Pels
Ueli Scheuermeier
Christina Merl
Tina Hetzel
Tariq Zaman
Jocelyne Yennega Kompaore

Related Discussions

Summary

The question posed by Chase Palmeri from IFAD in a You Tube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYlrKmV3S6c) related to the difficulty to get managers and other Headquarters-based people to move their focus away from KM as a product (i.e. reports, newsletters, etc.)., to KM as a process, which was easier to do with her field-based colleagues.

Some of the main points that came out of the discussion:

  • Jaap Pels argues that the development sector is heavily focused on tangible outputs/deliverables/results in logframed a world and that is isn't in the interest of organisations/hierarchies/managers to change that. To make people/managers start to value the processes, the only way is to change the 'framing of the problem' and to change the metaphors and vocabulary used, through a face to face meeting far away from the office, preferably on the ground in the neighborhood of the ultimate beneficiaries of development cooperation and to make it interesting for them, suggests to discuss around some posts by Owen Barder, Ben Ramalingam and Tim Harford (see http://wiki.km4dev.org/Moving_people%27s_focus_away_from_KM_%22products%22_to_KM_or_KS_processes#Recommended_Resources)
  • Ueli Scheuermeier suggests to get the desk folks in HQ to discuss THEIR practices, THEIR challenges, THEIR headaches and ways to do things (ie. how to push proposals efficiently through the bureaucratic process, how to move money reliably and fast to where it is needed, how to explain problems with partners when they happen, how to engage and interact with private sector funders, how to deal with ICT-hiccups, not what happens out there at the implementation front. Also to make sure it gets to be experienced by the intended actors that the exchange platform and the process there IS the "manual", not some document for reading up on
  • Christina Merl added that this is exactly what they are doing (or trying to achieve) in the organisational context she works with, and she wonders why organisations are always so focused on KM theory and documentation rather than listening to their practitioners and change and improve their work processes accordingly
  • Tina Hetzel never had a good answer when her former chief asked her: "How do I measure the process?" but it did help that the organizational culture at the time believed in processes rather than products. She thinks this is because of the HQ people had worked before in the field and knew about processes. So she believes we need managers with field experience, evaluation with the people/participants and managers who take this kind of evaluation the most important base and easy measurement instruments that focus on processes and learning.
  • Tariq Zaman suggested some very useful readings on the knowledge processes and measurement of knowledge processes and process oriented Indigenous Knowledge Management (see http://wiki.km4dev.org/Moving_people%27s_focus_away_from_KM_%22products%22_to_KM_or_KS_processes#Recommended_Resources)
  • Jocelyne Yennega Kompaore believes that KM is less a product or a process, but rather a state of mind and a personal, then a collective attitude. Products are useful but processes make it possible to come up with quality products. What makes you invest in the process, value the products and gives you autonomy in action, is what she finds most important.





Detailed Description

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Examples in Application

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Recommended Resources

  • Complexity and development [presentation and podcast]: HeaderPeople working in development don't need to be told that it complicated, in the sense that there are lots of problems to try to solve. But there is growing interest in the idea that economic systems are complex, in a specific sense borrowed from physics and biology. Books by Eric Beinhocker and Tim Harford have popularised the idea that these processes may be at work in economics, and a new book of essayslooks at how complexity thinking might affect economic policy-making. Earlier this year, the Kapuściński Lecture considered the implications of complexity thinking for development economics and development policy. Now there is an updated version as a narrated online presentation which lasts about 45 minutes. You can watch and listen online http://www.cgdev.org/content/multimedia/detail/1426397/
  • Owen Barder's blog: http://www.owen.org
  • Ben Ramalingam's blog: http://aidontheedge.info
  • The concept of ‘processual perspectives on indigenous knowledge’ is highlighted by Zent (2009) that mainly deals with the aspects of — creation, transmission, transformation, conservation, and loss : Zent, S. (2009). A genealogy of scientific representations of indigenous knowledge. Landscape, process, and power: re-evaluating traditional environmental knowledge. Studies in environmental anthropology and ethnobiology. Oxford: Berghan Books, 19-67.
  • For measurement of knowledge processes Bukowitz & Williams (2000) suggested Knowledge Management Diagnostic (KMD) tool to gauge the KM efforts of an ordinary business and research organisation according to the knowledge management process framework: Bukowitz, W., & Williams, R. (2000). The knowledge management fieldbook. Recherche, 67, 02.