sdclan

Tenders and offers seen through the lenses of learning and sustainability

by Ernst Bolliger Agridea / Team international

Preface: Preparing for an evaluation mission of SDC’s Mongolia Green Gold project (three key words: the Tragedy of the Commons – pasture management – herder associations) I have pictures of overgrazed pastureland, herds of cattle, goat, sheep, camels and horses in front of my eyes. In this vast landscape with generally scarce pastures there are some green spots, attractive for all herders to drive their herds for grazing.
Cut.
Change of the scene.

Some two years ago, a parliamentary audit made it clear: SDC does not follow the rules about public tendering of their mandates. (more…)

Any team or group of persons working on a common topic, e.g. a thematic network of SDC, needs to ensure mutual information about and participation in relevant issues and moments.  There are different ways to do this. Peter Reinhard, former head of the international team of Agridea* has his own personal way of information management by having “an open ear in the office”.  Discover his approach, its preconditions and limitations through Olivia Hartmann’s  interview, and find her own conclusions addressing  SDC collaborators.

by Olivia Hartmann, Agridea/Team International

Peter Reinhard, you have been workingin a shared office within the International Team of Agridea for long years, even in your function as head of that team and of other entities within Agridea. What is your first spontaneous thought when you hear “the open ear in the office”?

So many things happen in the office – a phone call here, a quick question amongst colleagues there. The open ear allows me to pick up a lot of information and grasp roughly what is going on without having to invest extra time…. Or at least I know where I need to invest more time to ask further questions.  

These are all positive associations. Are there any negative aspects of the open ear? (more…)

As in her  first post (cf. 17 July), Corinne Sprecher, Agridea/Team International, went to further look for champions  who consciously apply knowledge management-tools in their work.  In this article she relates and reflects on experiences  regarding learning from one’s own experience. 

by Corinne Sprecher

In this second post, SDC staff members share with us some more of their experiences and lessons of applying  Knowledge Management Tools in daily life. This time the focus is laid on learning from one’s own and others’ experience. (more…)

In our interview series “11 Questions to…” we ask people from in and around SDC and the KM world the same 11 questions.
Our goal is to offer insight into different working methods, different ways of looking at individual and institutional learning, and different ideas and opinions on how to make organisations more efficient… And, along the way, to hear interesting stories and experiences our interviewees have in store! Today: Anandsaikhan Nyamdavaa, National Programme Officer (NPO), Swiss Cooperation Office Mongolia. (more…)

by Bertha Camacho and Adrian Gnägi

Solution Exchange pioneered a structured way to conduct e-discussions, called “e-discussion campaigns with consolidated replies”. The structure of those e-discussions looks like this:

• A query is posted on the e-forum of a network and experience carriers are invited to post replies within a pre-determined time frame. Frequently, the moderator supports members with the wording of the query, making sure the query is short, easy to understand and appealing to be answered.
• Moderators lobby experienced network members to post replies in the e-forum. This lobbying is worked mostly over the phone. According to Solution Exchange, it is the major time investment of the e-moderator.
• When the discussion campaign is over, the e-moderator sums up the discussion in a “consolidated reply”. The e-moderator condenses the main messages into an easy-to-understand analytical summary and includes all individual contributions in full into the document.

This post reflects on the first “e-discussion campaign with consolidated replies” conducted by SDC’s “decentralization and local governance” network (dlgn) (more…)