Fast and Effective Change Management

When embarking on a change initiative, one should rapidly implement change that results in the higher levels of performance that were envisioned when the decision to make the changes was made. To make this happen, organizations must first overcome the resistance to change and then secure as much discretionary effort as possible. (No. 70 | December 2009)

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A Primer on Organizational Learning

Organizational learning is the ability of an organization to gain insight and understanding from experience through experimentation, observation, analysis, and a willingness to examine successes and failures. There are two key notions: organizations learn through individuals who act as agents for them; at the same time, individual learning in organizations is facilitated or constrained by its learning system. (No. 69 | December 2009)

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A Primer on Organizational Culture

Culture guides the way individuals and groups in an organization interact with one another and with parties outside it. It is the premier competitive advantage of high-performance organizations. Sadly, for others, organizational culture is the most difficult attribute to change: it outlives founders, leaders, managers, products, services, and well-nigh the rest. It is best improved by organizational learning for change. (No. 68 | November 2009)

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Improving Sector and Thematic Reporting

Communities of practice have become an accepted part of organizational development. Learning organizations build and leverage them with effect. To reach their potential, much as other bodies, they stand to gain from healthy reporting. Quality of information and its proper presentation enable stakeholders to make sound and reasonable assessments of performance, and take appropriate action. (No. 67 | November 2009)

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Understanding Complexity

In development agencies, paradigms of linear causality condition much thinking and practice. They encourage command-and-control hierarchies, centralize decision making, and dampen creativity and innovation. Globalization demands that organizations see our turbulent world as a collection of evolving ecosystems. To survive and flourish they must then be adaptable and fleet-footed. Notions of complexity offer a wealth of insights and guidance to 21st century organizations that strive to do so. (No. 66 | November 2009)

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Drawing Learning Charters

Despite competing demands, modern organizations should not forget that learning is the best way to meet the challenges of the time. Learning charters demonstrate commitment: they are a touchstone against which provision and practice can be tested and a waymark with which to guide, monitor, and evaluate progress. It is difficult to argue that what learning charters advocate is not worth striving for. (No. 65 | October 2009)

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Distributing Leadership

The prevailing view of leadership is that it is concentrated or focused. In organizations, this makes it an input to business processes and performance— dependent on the attributes, behaviors, experience, knowledge, skills, and potential of the individuals chosen to impact these. The theory of distributed leadership thinks it best considered as an outcome. Leadership is defined by what one does, not who one is. Leadership at all levels matters and must be drawn from, not just be added to, individuals and groups in organizations. (No. 64 | October 2009) Read the paper [ PDF: 785kb | 8 pages ]

Exercising Servant Leadership

Servant leadership is now in the vocabulary of enlightened leadership. It is a practical, altruistic philosophy that supports people who choose to serve first, and then lead, as a way of expanding service to individuals and organizations. The sense of civil community that it advocates and engenders can facilitate and smooth successful and principled change. (No. 63 | September 2009)

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Learning in Strategic Alliances

Strategic alliances that bring organizations together promise unique opportunities for partners. The reality is often otherwise. Successful strategic alliances manage the partnership, not just the agreement, for collaborative advantage. Above all, they also pay attention to learning priorities in alliance evolution. (No. 62 | September 2009)

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Harnessing Creativity and Innovation in the Workplace

Creativity plays a critical role in the innovation process, and innovation that markets value is a creator and sustainer of performance and change. In organizations, stimulants and obstacles to creativity drive or impede enterprise. (No. 61 | September 2009)

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From Strategy to Practice

Strategic reversals are quite commonly failures of execution. In many cases, a strategy is abandoned out of impatience or because of pressure for an instant payoff before it has had a chance to take root and yield results. Or its focal point is allowed to drift over time. To navigate a strategy, one must maintain a balance between strategizing and learning modes of thinking. (No. 60 | August 2009)

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Leading in the Workplace

Theories of leadership are divided: some underscore the primacy of personal qualities; others stress that systems are all-important. Both interpretations are correct: a larger pool of leaders is desirable all the time (and superleaders are necessary on occasion) but its development must be part of systemic invigoration of leadership in organizations.(No. 59 | August 2009) Read the paper [ PDF: 539kb | 8 pages ]

Enhancing Knowledge Management Strategies

Despite worldwide attention to strategic planning, the notion of strategic practice is surprisingly new. To draw a strategy is relatively easy but to execute it is difficult—strategy is both a macro and a micro phenomenon that depends on synchronization. One should systematically review, evaluate, prioritize, sequence, manage, redirect, and if necessary even cancel strategic initiatives. (No. 58 | August 2009)

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Building Trust in the Workplace

Workplace dynamics make a significant difference to people and the organizations they sustain. High-performance organizations earn, develop, and retain trust for superior results. (No. 57 | August 2009)

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The Roots of an Emerging Discipline

Organizations must become information based: (i) Knowledge workers are not amenable to command and control; (ii) In the face of unremitting competition, it is vital to systematize innovation and entrepreneurship; (iii) In a knowledge-based economy, it is imperative to decide what information one needs to conduct one's affairs. (No. 56 | August 2009)

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Managing Virtual Teams

Virtual team management is the ability to organize and coordinate with effect a group whose members are not in the same location or time zone, and may not even work for the organization. The predictor of success is as always clarity of purpose. But group participation in achieving that is more than ever important to compensate for lost context. Virtual team management requires deeper understanding of people, process, and technology, and recognition that trust is a more limiting factor compared with face-to-face interactions. (No. 55 | August 2009)

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Coaching and Mentoring

Coaching and mentoring can inspire and empower employees, build commitment, increase productivity, grow talent, and promote success. They are now essential elements of modern managerial practice. However, many companies still have not established related schemes. By not doing so, they also fail to capitalize on the experience and knowledge seasoned personnel can pass on. (No. 54 | July 2009)

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Value Cycles for Development Outcomes

Development work is a knowledge-intensive process that is fed by knowledge services and knowledge solutions. Projects are the primary mechanism by which strategic change is brought about. Value cycles can maximize their potential through delivery platforms. (No. 53 | July 2009)

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Asking Effective Questions

Questioning is a vital tool of human thought and interactional life. Since questions serve a range of functions, depending on the context of the interaction, the art and science of questioning lies in knowing what question to ask when. (No. 52 | July 2009)

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Learning Lessons with Knowledge Audits

Knowledge from evaluations will not be used effectively if the specific organizational context, knowledge, and relationships of evaluation agencies, and the external environment they face, are not dealt with in an integrated and coherent manner. Knowledge management can shed light on this and related initiatives can catalyze and facilitate identification, creation, storage, sharing, and use of lessons. (No. 51 | June 2009)

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Wearing Six Thinking Hats

The difference between poor and effective teams lies not so much in their collective mental equipment but in how well they use their abilities to think together. The Six Thinking Hats technique helps actualize the thinking potential of teams. (No. 50 | June 2009)

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Understanding and Developing Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence describes an ability, capacity, skill, or self-perceived ability to identify, assess, and manage the emotions of one's self, of others, and of groups. The theory is enjoying considerable support in the literature and has had successful applications in many domains. (No. 49 | June 2009)

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Learning and Development for Management

The insights, attitudes, and skills that equip managers for their various responsibilities come from many sources outside formal education or training. To identify areas for improvement, it is first necessary to identify what these responsibilities are. (No. 48 | June 2009)

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Building Institutional Capacity for Development

The conditions of economic and social progress include participation, democratic processes, and the location of necessarily diverse organizational setups at the community, national, regional, and increasingly global levels. Access to and judicious use of information underpin all these. (No. 47 | May 2009)

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Building a Learning Organization

Learning is the key to success—some would even say survival—in today’s organizations. Knowledge should be continuously enriched through both internal and external learning. For this to happen, it is necessary to support and energize organization, people, knowledge, and technology for learning. (No. 46 | May 2009)

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Collaborating with Wikis

Wikis are websites that invite voluntary contributions to organize information. They harness the power of collaborative minds to innovate faster, cocreate, and cut costs. They are now serious business. (No. 45 | May 2009)

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Learning from Evaluation

Evaluation serves two main purposes: accountability and learning. Development agencies have tended to prioritize the first, and given responsibility for that to centralized units. But evaluation for learning is the area where observers find the greatest need today and tomorrow. (No. 44 | May 2009)

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Disseminating Knowledge Products

Dissemination is the interactive process of communicating knowledge to target audiences so that it may be used to lead to change. The challenge is to improve the accessibility of desired knowledge products by those they are intended to reach. This means ensuring physical availability of the product to as large a proportion of the target audience as possible and making the product comprehensible to those who receive it. (No. 43 | May 2009)

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Dimensions of the Learning Organization

Organizational learning is still seeking a theory and there can be no (and perhaps cannot be) agreement on the dimensions of the learning organization. However, useful models associated with learning and change can be leveraged individually or in association to reflect on the overall system of an organization. (No. 42 | April 2009)

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Overcoming Roadblocks to Learning

The gulf between the ideal type of a learning organization and the state of affairs in typical bilateral and multilateral development agencies remains huge. Defining roadblocks, however numerous they may be, is half the battle to removing them—it might make them part of the solution instead of part of the problem. (No. 41 | April 2009)

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Drawing Mind Maps

Mind maps are a visual means that represent, link, and arrange concepts, themes, or tasks, with connections usually extending radially from a central topic. They are used by individuals and groups (informally and intuitively) to generate, visualize, structure, and classify these. (No. 40 | April 2009)

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Glossary of Knowledge Management

The knowledge management discipline can be cryptic. These Knowledge Solutions define its most common concepts in simple terms. (No. 39 | April 2009)

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Growing Managers, Not Bosses

In the 21st century, managers are responsible for the application and performance of knowledge at task, team, and individual levels. Their accountability is absolute and cannot be relinquished. In a changing world, successful organizations spend more time, integrity, and brainpower on selecting them than on anything else. (No. 38 | April 2009)

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Managing by Walking Around

Management by walking around emphasizes the importance of interpersonal contact, open appreciation, and recognition. It is one of the most important ways to build civility and performance in the workplace. (No. 37 | April 2009)

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Conducting Effective Meetings

Meetings bring people together to discuss a predetermined topic. However, too many are poorly planned and managed, and therefore fail to satisfy objectives when they do not simply waste time. The operating expenses of time wasted include related meeting expenditures, salaries, and opportunity costs. (No. 36 | March 2009)

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Writing Weblogs

A weblog, in its various forms, is a web-based application on which dated entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video are posted. A weblog enables groups of people to discuss electronically areas of interest and to review different opinions and information surrounding a topic. (No. 35 | March 2009)

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Building Networks of Practice

Organizational boundaries have been stretched, morphed, and redesigned to a degree unimaginable 10 years ago. Networks of practice have come of age. The learning organization pays attention to their forms and functions, evolves principles of engagement, circumscribes and promotes success factors, and monitors and evaluates performance with knowledge performance metrics. (No. 34 | March 2009)

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Working in Teams

Cooperative work by a team can produce remarkable results. The challenge is to move from the realm of the possible to the realm of practice. (No. 33 | March 2009)

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Staff Profile Pages

Staff profile pages are dynamic, adaptive electronic directories that store information about the knowledge, skills, experience, and interests of people. They are a cornerstone of successful knowledge management and learning initiatives. (No. 32 | February 2009)

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The SCAMPER Technique

Ideas are not often plucked out of thin air. The SCAMPER brainstorming technique uses a set of directed questions to resolve a problem (or meet an opportunity). It can also turn a tired idea into something new and different. (No. 31 | February 2009)

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The Five Whys Technique

When confronted with a problem, have you ever stopped and asked “why” five times? If you do not ask the right question, you will not get the right answer. The Five Whys is a simple question-asking technique that explores the cause-and-effect relationships underlying problems. (No. 30 | February 2009)

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Assessing the Effectiveness of Assistance in Capacity Development

Feedback is the dynamic process of presenting and disseminating information to improve performance. Feedback mechanisms are increasingly being recognized as key elements of learning before, during, and after. Assessments by executing agencies of the effectiveness of assistance in capacity development are prominent among these. (No. 29 | February 2009)

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Social Network Analysis

Power no longer resides exclusively (if at all) in states, institutions, or large corporations. It is located in the networks that structure society. Social network analysis seeks to understand networks and their participants and has two main focuses: the actors and the relationships between them in a specific social context. (No. 28 | February 2009)

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Conducting Effective Presentations

Simple planning and a little discipline can turn an ordinary presentation into a lively and engaging event. (No. 27 | February 2009)

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Monthly Progress Notes

Feedback is the dynamic process of presenting and disseminating information to improve performance. Feedback mechanisms are increasingly recognized as key elements of learning before, during, and after. Monthly progress notes on project administration, which document accomplishments as well as bottlenecks, are prominent among these. (No. 26 | January 2009)

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The Most Significant Change Technique

The Most Significant Change technique helps monitor and evaluate the performance of projects and programs. It involves the collection and systematic participatory interpretation of stories of significant change emanating from the field level—stories about who did what, when, and why, and the reasons why the event was important. It does not employ quantitative indicators. (No. 25 | January 2009)

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Picking Investments in Knowledge Management

What can be measured is not necessarily important and what is important cannot always be measured. When prioritizing investments in knowledge management, common traps lie waiting. They are delaying rewards for quick wins, using too many metrics, implementing metrics that are hard to control, and focusing on metrics that tear people away from business goals. (No. 24 | December 2008)

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Conducting Successful Retreats

A retreat is a meeting designed and organized to facilitate the ability of a group to step back from day-to-day activities for a period of concentrated discussion, dialogue, and strategic thinking about their organization’s future or specific issues. Organizations will reap full benefits if they follow basic rules. (No. 23 | December 2008)

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Culture Theory

Culture theory strengthens the expectation that markets work, not because they are comprised of autonomous individuals who are free of social sanctions but because they are powered by social beings and their distinctive ideas, beliefs, values, and knowledge. It can contribute to understanding and promoting development where group relationships predominate and individualism is tempered. (No. 22 | December 2008)

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Appreciative Inquiry

Appreciative inquiry is the process of facilitating positive change in organizations. Its basic assumption is uncomplicated: every organization has something that works well. Appreciative inquiry is therefore an exciting generative approach to organizational development. At a higher level, it is also a way of being and seeing. (No. 21 | December 2008)

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The Reframing Matrix

Everyone sees things differently—knowledge often lies in the eye of the beholder. The reframing matrix enables different perspectives to be generated and used in management processes. It expands the number of options for solving a problem. (No. 20 | November 2008)

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Action Learning

Action learning is a structured method that enables small groups to work regularly and collectively on complicated problems, take action, and learn as individuals and as a team while doing so. (No. 19 | November 2008)

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Notions of Knowledge Management

Knowledge management is getting the right knowledge to the right people at the right time, and helping them (with incentives) to apply it in ways that strive to improve organizational performance. (No. 18 | November 2008)

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Outcome Mapping

Development is about people—it is about how they relate to one another and their environment, and how they learn in doing so. Outcome mapping puts people and learning first and accepts unexpected change as a source of innovation. It shifts the focus from changes in state, viz. reduced poverty, to changes in behaviors, relationships, actions, and activities. (No. 17 | November 2008)

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Focusing on Project Metrics

The need to ensure that scarce funding is applied to effective projects is a goal shared by all. Focusing on common parameters of project performance is a means to that end. (No. 16 | November 2008)

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The Sustainable Livelihoods Approach

The sustainable livelihoods approach improves understanding of the livelihoods of the poor. It organizes the factors that constrain or enhance livelihood opportunities, and shows how they relate. It can help plan development activities and assess the contribution that existing activities have made to sustaining livelihoods. (No. 15 | November 2008)

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Identifying and Sharing Good Practices

Good practice is a process or methodology that has been shown to be effective in one part of the organization and might be effective in another too. (No. 14 | November 2008)

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Auditing Knowledge

Knowledge audits help organizations identify their knowledge-based assets and develop strategies to manage them. (No. 13 | October 2008)

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Managing Knowledge Workers

A knowledge worker is someone who is employed because of his or her knowledge of a subject matter, rather than ability to perform manual labor. They perform best when empowered to make the most of their deepest skills. (No. 12 | October 2008) Read the paper [ PDF: 273kb | 3 pages ]

Reading the Future

Scenario-building enables managers to invent and then consider in depth several varied stories of equally plausible futures. They can then make strategic decisions that will be sound for all plausible futures. No matter what future takes place, one is more likely to be ready for and influential in it if one has thought seriously about scenarios. Scenario planning challenges mental models about the world and lifts the blinders that limit our creativity and resourcefulness. (No. 11 | October 2008)

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Storytelling

Storytelling is the use of stories or narratives as a communication tool to value, share, and capitalize on the knowledge of individuals. (No. 10 | October 2008)

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Creating and Running Partnerships

Partnerships have a crucial role to play in the development agenda. To reach the critical mass required to reduce poverty, there must be more concerted effort, greater collaboration, alignment of inputs, and a leveraging of resources and effort. Understanding the drivers of success and the drivers of failure helps efforts to create and run them. (No. 9 | October 2008)

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Posting Research Online

Dissemination is an indispensable means of maximizing the impact of research. It is an intrinsic element of all good research practice that promotes the profile of research institutions and strengthens their capacities. The challenge is to ensure the physical availability of research material and to make it intelligible to those who access it. (No. 8 | October 2008)

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Linking Research to Practice

The volume of research greatly exceeds its application in practice. Researchers must pay greater attention to the production of their research findings in a flexible range of formats in recognition of the varied needs of consumers. (No. 7 | October 2008)

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Output Accomplishment and the Design and Monitoring Framework

The design and monitoring framework is a logic model for objectives oriented planning that structures the main elements in a project, highlighting linkages between intended inputs, planned activities, and expected results.(No. 6 | October 2008)

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Using Plain English

Many people write too much, bureaucratically, and obscurely. Using plain English will save time in writing, make writing far easier, and improve understanding. (No. 5 | October 2008)

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Building Communities of Practice

Communities of practice are groups of like-minded, interacting people who filter, analyze, invest and provide, convene, build, and learn and facilitate to ensure more effective creation and sharing of knowledge in their domain. (No. 4 | October 2008)

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Conducting After-Action Reviews and Retrospects

Organizational learning calls for nonstop assessment of performance—its successes and failures. This makes sure that learning takes place and supports continuous improvement. After-action reviews and retrospects are a tool that facilitates assessments; they enable this by bringing together a team to discuss an activity or project openly and honestly. (No. 3 | October 2008)

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Conducting Exit Interviews

Exit interviews provide feedback on why employees leave, what they liked about their job, and where the organization needs improvement. They are most effective when data is compiled and tracked over time. The concept has been revisited as a tool to capture knowledge from leavers. Exit interviews can be a win-win situation: the organization retains a portion of the leaver’s knowledge and shares it; the departing employee articulates unique contributions and leaves a mark. (No. 2 | October 2008)

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Conducting Peer Assists

Peer assists are events that bring individuals together to share their experiences, insights, and knowledge on an identified challenge or problem. They also promote collective learning and develop networks among those invited. (No. 1 | October 2008)

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