Stepping Higher - Reflections on the Knowledge Age

During the last few weeks I was heavily involved with the SHIFT Week of Innovation Action , a series of parallel events taking place in 21 different country offices. Over 50 practitioners were invited to ‘shift’ from one country office to another to share their experience on innovation methodologies and what they learned from their ongoing innovation projects (many of them funded by UNDP’s Innovation Facility ), learn from others, and ‘shift mindsets’ in the process. As part of the team that coordinated the event week I was in awe of the incredible energy coming from country office colleagues and the enthusiasm, creativity and time commitment on the side of organizers, participants, and the coordination team here in New York. And from the feedback that has been rolling in so far (the evaluation survey shows about 95% of participants were satisfied or very satisfied with the event) it seems the SHIFT initiative was a success all around. Yet, we all remember other instances of w...

Since the World Bank published its report early this month which states that over 30% of its policy reports have never been downloaded even once (!) and only 13 percent of policy reports were downloaded at least 250 times, a fascinating debate on the purpose and value of knowledge products is flourishing the web, and the posts from KM practitioners all over keep pouring in. It’s not just the World Bank, but most international organizations Interestingly, I have been thinking about exactly the same questions for the last 9 months now as I was drafting UNDP’s new Knowledge Management Strategy for the upcoming years. Here’s a passage which captures UNDPs own dilemma regarding knowledge products: “ The current process of knowledge product definition, development, dissemination and measurement does not yield the quality, reach and impact that is needed for UNDP to be a thought leader in development.” The Strategy goes on to stress that UNDP intends to revise its process of planni...

Following my  earlier posts  on my assignment with the Sub-Regional Response Facility for Syria in Amman, Jordan, where we identified the general directions for KM for this business unit, here are now the details of the KM plan that I introduced, based on our earlier needs assessment. 1.   An Online Collaboration Space for the Facility, targeted at the Regional Working Group and invited guests To support of the Facility’s role as a broker, the creation of an online collaboration space hosted by the Sub-Regional Facility will allow the team to provide an online home for the Regional UNDG Working Group for the Arab States/MENA to share draft papers and relevant resources on an ongoing basis. Even more it creates a space to discuss questions and collect comments from colleagues on the Facility’s ongoing work. In the spirit of ‘working out loud’ we will also invite a number of selected colleagues from all UNDG agencies into this space. 2.   Establishment of a...

This month, I was asked how organizations could introduce a standard process by which all colleagues leaving their job will be requested to document their knowledge, including tools and documents they developed, in a database, so it can be accessed and researched by all colleagues for further reference. I feel the notion of “capturing knowledge in databases” keeps coming up from time to time like a haunting ghost that you never really get rid of. It important to take it seriously, because it is often a reflection of a deeper misconception in organizations of how knowledge sharing dynamics work, and therefore what knowledge management can (and cannot) achieve. The truth is that exit interviews and so-called “knowledge databases” are probably among the worst tools one can turn to when choosing a knowledge management approach. To me they are akin to the attempt of trapping sun rays in a glass jar. Let’s look a bit closer at the dynamics that are at play: While exit interviews ...

Has anyone ever considererd, that e.g. FedEx or UPS may own the written letters or christmas gifts I send through them to my friends? Of course not. However, when it comes to internet content, these self-evident truths established as a common sense in modern society over years suddenly seem re-negotiable. Facebook now tried to strech this silent agreement to an extent which could be regarded as ridiculous - if it wasn't so outrageous. As reported by The Consumerist Blog , Facebook silently amended their existing Terms of Use a few weeks ago by a statement which allows Facebook to "use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you post" through Facebook. Basically do everything they want with any personal message or photo you send to your friends, even after you have deleted your account. The r...

How can you filter better what kind stuff you want to follow on twitter? Doing some further research on this, I discovered that there are indeed already a few options. First, there's the Twitter Pack Project , a free wiki where you can find users who are only twittering on specific issues. Some people are also automatically feeding their twitter with Twitter Feed , which can then be used to sharpen a twitter profile towards a certain issue. A great way to create a thematic twitter feed within a community has been presented by the Nonprofit Technology Network . By using a combination of a new common community Twitter account, Twitter Feed , Terraminds and a unique keyword like "ConferenceXY", they were able to produce a collaborative feed on an event where every post of users which contains the keyword "ConferenceXY" is published. However, I would still love to have in Twitter the option to define different categories (job, private life, hobby X, interest Y, etc)...

Here's just an add-on to my last post about Facebook . This article of the German journal DIE ZEIT points out the benefits of transparency in a completely other area: taxation. In Sweden, everyone knows what everyone earns and how many taxes they pay for the good of the national community . No hiding and no fear. And as a result more trust into the state and the community.