Is Your Organisation KM-Ready?
You may have heard about Knowledge Management (KM), but you are not an expert in the field. Or you may have worked at an organisation that had a KM framework and you would like to build something similar at your new organisation. It can feel a little daunting and overwhelming to start from scratch. You might wonder if your organisation is even ready for KM. Several indicators…
Knowledge Management and Futures Thinking: Using Insights to Plan for the Future
We often use Knowledge Management (KM) insights to help adapt and adjust projects and programmes to increase their efficiency and effectiveness. But a hidden power of those insights is that they can serve as the basis for and inform long-term plans and strategies, and spark creativity and innovation. The practice of futures thinking involves anticipating, analysing, and strategically planning for potential future scenarios. It’s an experiential process…
Why Knowledge Management is at the Heart of Learning
Knowledge and learning are inextricable. It is through learning that individuals and organisations acquire knowledge. Knowledge is an organisation’s most important intangible asset. An organisation must be willing to invest in Knowledge Management (KM) to harness the power of collective knowledge and learning. KM focuses on knowledge processes which include creation, acquisition, storing, sharing, and utilisation of knowledge. These processes support organisational learning, unlearning, and re-learning. Knowledge-Driven…
Embracing Failure
In project reports and other publications, the focus is usually on the successes – how many people reached, overall impact, changes achieved. Failures, mistakes, or underachievement are often seen and presented as difficulties, challenges, or unforeseen negative effects. They are also often understated or covered up, instead of being acknowledged as failures with clear lessons learned. By not devoting time and other resources to understanding and analysing…
Where Does KM Sit (or Should Sit) within an Organisation?
KM experts are often asked where KM is best placed within an organisation, with no definitive answer. Experience shows that KM does not have a clear place of its own and is often placed in very different units. The key point is that KM is very much cross-functional and affects every unit and team in an organisation, and therefore should not be isolated. This suggests that no…
Knowledge Management in a Remote or Hybrid Workplace – Which Tool to Use?
There is no denying that remote and hybrid work is changing the way we work. For many organisations, the COVID-19 pandemic forced a rapid evolution of technologies enabling communication and collaboration. For the most part, the technologies existed already, but they were slowly gaining ground in organisations. The pandemic forced a rapid adoption process, which in turn resulted in added confusion. The majority of the new tools…
Reporting Best Practices: Treat Reporting as a Continuous Cyclical Process
Reports usually come in at the end of an activity or a project, and the job of a report writer isn’t easy. Digging up tons of information from the very beginning is rather burdensome, especially if the project ran during a number of years and many things, including staff, may have changed during this time. Do yourself a favour and start treating reporting as a continuous cyclical…
Skills Building and Knowledge Management. Is There a Connection?
There is nothing new about the fact that employers want employees who know how to do things rather than employees with a lot of book knowledge and limited experience in how to apply that knowledge. There is also something inevitable about new generations of employees lacking experience in applying knowledge and needing to acquire “know how” since most of that valuable knowledge is acquired through… experience. Employers want…
Five Steps to Creating a Lasting Impact through Storytelling
Storytelling in the development world is a powerful communication technique used to inspire and connect the audience with an organisation’s mission, vision and values. It may be used to illustrate the impact of a project or programme, provide evidence of project achievements to donors and stakeholders, raise awareness, and call to action. Indirectly, storytelling can also help identify challenges, gaps and/or failures in project design or implementation,…
Four Key Reasons Your Organisation Needs Knowledge Management
Knowledge in any organisation, including in the international development and non–profit sectors, is a highly valuable but often under-utilised asset. It flows in and out through various mediums, from reports, policies and procedures, to databases, stories, and most importantly, the people. In the era of innovation, combined with uncertainty and a fast-paced, constantly changing environment, particularly in the geographical and thematic areas of operation of non-profit organisations,…
Reporting Best Practices: Fact-Checking
Fact-checking is far from a new phenomenon. In the international development sector, it is an integral part of Quality Assurance used to verify information and avoid spreading misinformation. It is also used to educate and empower communities. Fact-checking deserves to be adopted as a standard practice among report writers and anyone working with information. Introduced in early 1900s, fact-checking was initially used by journalists to verify information…
In Order to Learn, Pause to Reflect Regularly
How do we learn in a work environment? From conversations with colleagues, partners, beneficiaries, documents, and multiple other sources. However, most of what we learn at work is through experience, our own and that of others. Through regular Pause to Reflect sessions, we can nurture organisational knowledge, draw lessons learned, and improve how we learn. “Experience is inevitable. Learning is not.” In order to truly learn from…