Communications Review 2009 Niamh Brannigan February 2010.

Communications Review

2009Niamh Brannigan February

2010

What Worked

What didn’t Work

New professional and fresh look for the GeSCI Brand

Updated site

Site has reflected GeSCI’s Strategy and organisation of work up to this point

Better resources

Makes good use of web 2.0

Good volume of site feedback

Brand

Country and Regional Pages static

Site is not a channel for views and experiences of partners

Site time consuming and difficult to maintain (whole site)

Knowledge Centre becoming overcrowded

No feedback on tools

Brand

ARP/AKE programme does not feature prominently on site

Stakeholders Brand new space for stakeholders

Interactive with video, images, discussion boards etc.

We ended up with 4 groups and many people joined

We have had noteable success with the OM and Research group

Stakeholders Tanzania and AKE groups did not engage

Minimal team inputs

Ning is password protected

Communities are notoriously difficult to cultivate.There is an underestimation of how much time and commitment and skill is required to build them

Overreliance on virtual apps to build communities

Marketing

Well designed

Branding consistent

Clear messages

Concepts explained

Broader appeal

Marketing

Major campaign requires organisation-wide support

Mail marketing has little impact without follow-up

We don’t know the impact of our message Marketing campaign must

blend online and offline channels

Need more input – ideas, news, stories and information

Knowledge Management

Knowledge management for the 21st Century

It facilitates a constant flow of knowledge which is applied and the cycle continues

Enables practice, approach and content to be constantly informed and thus improved by garnering input from other knowledge fields both tacit and explicit.

Its knowledge base is broad and rich

It operates in a shared domain

It ensures that knowledge is not static i.e. information

Knowledge Management

Misconception that ‘knowledge management’ is something someone else does – a knowledge officer, a comms manager or a research manager

Explicit knowledge must be better managed before GeSCI can afford to concern itself with ‘tacit’ knowledge

A knowledge bank or repository aides knowledge management but it is not the driving force

Knowledge management is hard to see but it is enabled by:•Monitoring and Evaluation (learning must influence programme)•Collaboration (enables much better sharing of knowledge which can be evident when collective goals are achieved)•Application of knowledge i.e. testing of TCO tool to improve it is an example of real knowledge management•Research and application of findings•Staff writing papers that synthesise their ideas (tacit capture) and those ideas being applied in real contexts

We need to focus on Knowledge Management as a whole with many small parts.

Any activity that enriches knowledge via the revision of an approach, a practice, a methodology, a tool, a report is knowledge management. Static knowledge saved in a data bank and reports written and circulated and then saved in a data bank is not knowledge management.

How

2010

Must

Be

Different

?

We Must COLLABORATE:

Systematically

ConsistentlyAround clearly defined goals

Across key Programmes

With clear roles and responsibiIities

Accountable to each other

CKM function will prioritise

CKM function will try to influence partners, not just produce outputs

CKM function will collaborate with each programme manager to develop mini-goals and objectives for each programme which both PMs will work together to achieve

The CKM function will measure and evaluate its progress by seeking feedback from the team

Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be. Kahlil Gibran

Thank you for your time