Communications Review 2009 Niamh 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 21 st 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 Consistently Around 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 Kahlil Gibran Thank you for your time