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

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
Ewen Le Borgne
Artur Silva

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 Recommended Resources [1])
• 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 Recommended Resources [2])
• 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
• Ewen Le Borgne thinks it boils down to the same old tricks always: clarify objectives, surface expectations, show the way/lead by example, connect/engage with champions and with nay-sayers that can be convinced, find local advocates (peers from hard nay-sayers who could perhaps influence the latter on your behalf)and amplify what's going well (see his blog post and testimony video in Recommended Resources [3]). And start from managers' existing problems and perhaps use their own reasoning: what info products can we use to solve these problems? What have we tried in the past and what were the results? It's likely they will come to the conclusion that they need to look beyond products. In parallel, build a list of successful examples of KS practices, for which you need to develop a simple but strong set of feedback mechanisms online and offline.
• Artur Silva asks, as a practitioner and not as a scientist, shouldn't we be discussing the question of «Moving people away from KM/KS "products" and processes towards KC/KE products and processes?» (“C” from "Creation", “E” from "Enabling").
• Ueli Scheuermeier shares this link to creation and "enabling" and calls it "knowledge competence". Competence in the sense of being able to make a difference in the real world out there, same as the difference between knowledge and doledge

Detailed Description

[the meat of the topic – clearly, crisply communicated summary of the topic. Where relevant, a brief story – no more than 1-2 paragraphs - of how this topic has been turned into practice, ideally from the KM4Dev archives? If the example is long, separate into a separate subsection]

Examples in Application

[One or a few practical examples and references that illustrate the topic or show how it is done in practice]

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.
• Ewen Le Borgne's blog post: http://km4meu.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/harvesting-insights-agile-km-between-stealth-and-big-bang/ (in this case applied to agile KM but really this is more of a generic set of mechanisms for persuasion). And the video testimony of Alan, one of their best advocates: http://infoilri.wordpress.com/2012/08/16/harmonizing-knowledge-management-and-research/