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The Swiss Cooperation Office (SCO) Mongolia has witnessed a clear transformation from scepticism about the networks’ usefulness towards a supportive environment for knowledge management. This change is so far one of attitude only, however, with little direct impact on operations in the field.

Over the last couple of years the SCO Mongolia has seen a trend from doubt, scepticism and criticism about the “raison d’être” of the networks towards a supportive environment for knowledge management. The following visible changes could be observed:

• All NPOs, SCO management and several project staff are network members – although only 4 out of 11 consider themselves as being “active”;

• Thematic events are now held regularly, often in the form of a “Brown Bag Lunch”, in order to present a topic in-depth and share information;

• Staff responsibilities have been rearranged along thematic lines and in accordance with the domains of our new Cooperation Strategy 2013-16; and

• Staff incentives have been set in a way to encourage participation in knowledge networks, for instance by being able to attend face-to-face (f2f) meetings while having knowledge management firmly included in everyone’s annual performance assessment (MAP).

This year the SCO held two major events to promote the knowledge networks. Interestingly, a recent anonymous survey among SCO and self-implemented project staff revealed that one third still didn’t know about the networks, and that half the respondents were not members in any of them. But 91% of staff thought that networks were useful!

Photo: SDC Mongolia Staff

Given our recent history with “networking”, the SCO Mongolia embraced the opportunity to participate in the blog series “Cooperation Offices and Networks”. We even requested for the questions to be more “provocative”!

Questions and answers

1) Are the networks completely HQ-driven and hardly visible in the SCO or do you feel included and involved in the network activities?

While staff agreed that the answers to these questions varied from network to network, overall they are perceived as being rather HQ driven. At the level of the SCO, some networks are very visible, while others are hardly noticeable. Generally staff feels included whenever an opportunity to interact and engage presents itself. This is often the case, for instance, in the run-up to f2f events, when networks are generally buzzing with activity.

2) Are the networks an additional burden or a useful support for sharing and learning? Are you lazy lurkers or do you proactively contribute to the network activities?

It is both. All staff felt that sometimes networks feel like a burden (e.g. as a MAP goal), while at other times they are more than just “nice to have” but really support us in sharing experiences and learning, for instance when it comes to problem-solving type issues. And yes, we feel that half the time we are rather reactive, passive and “lazy lurkers”, and that we want to be much more proactive in future. However, the usefulness of the network really depends also on the way it manages to play its role of a “knowledge broker”.

3) Are networks a luxury occupation or does sharing and learning through networks strengthen in the end the operation? Do you observe positive change? Where and how?

This was the most debated question. No, networks are clearly not perceived as a luxury. They are seen as a necessity. A learning organisation such as SDC must have a vehicle through which it can share experiences and promote knowledge. However, all staff agreed that networks, so far, are not directly linked to our operations. In order for that to happen, networks would have to become a source of more factual, practical and evidence-based knowledge that is easily accessible to all its members.

As the debate got going, our discussion group decided to draw up some simple recommendations on how to make the networks more useful and engaging for SCOs:

1. Have a dedicated and motivated moderation of the network;

2. Offer qualified and useful services for operations;

3. Design attractive and interactive network websites / online portals; and

4. Provide professional and highly qualified inputs on specific topics (similar to “Ted Talks”).

At the end of our discussion we started to wonder why we all seemed to spend more time on social media than our knowledge networks. Hence, we were asking ourselves, how can knowledge networks become as engaging as Facebook?

This post is the second in a serie on the network experience of the Cooperation Offices.
Read the previous post:
Cooperation Offices and Networks – the Pretoria Story (by Reto Wieser)

In the perspective of the Swiss Cooperation Office Southern Africa the networks did arrive. Reto Wieser, Director of Cooperation summarizes how networks make a difference for his team. And he points out some suggestions how networked learning and collaboration can be further strengthened trough the active implication of the Directors of Cooperation and the members. (more…)

What’s the true nature of networks? In this post Nadia von Holzen reflects on the characteristics of networks and how best sharing and learning in networks can be organized and supported. (more…)

The Agriculture and Food Security Network recently organized its face to face meeting. Planning such an event in a network surrounding poses particular challenges. The face to face not only entails the exchange of content but should also foster community building and give participants a chance to share their personal expertise. In today’s blog contribution the network’s core group takes stock of the planning process of their event and its realisation. How is the preparation work best organised and coordinated? How can methodological and thematic coherence be assured? How can quality of inputs be guaranteed?

By Core Group Agriculture and Food Security Network

(more…)

In 2008 SDC has introduced networks as “caretakers” of knowledge and competence. Networks imply a particular mode of work, less hierarchical and self-managed. In what ways have the networks led to a changed way of learning? Could SDC secure its competence and operational quality? There are no final answers yet. The networks are developing their particular shapes and modes of sharing and learning. The key challenge remains for SDC and its collaborators: To engage in sharing in a trustful environment, both personally and institutionally. (more…)

In her blog post Nadia von Holzen reflects on the nature of networks, on their constitution, texture and driving force. Networks shouldn’t be taken as rigid entities, they are driven by people and their engagement and are thus propelled by an inner dynamic. Networks grow, evolve and move and it is the network’s members who breathe life into this loose conglomerate transforming it into something similar to a living organism. Therefore networks are pivotal to a learning organization as they comprise essential qualities to manage, transform and generate knowledge. (more…)

From Cochabamba to Zollikofen… What has happened in the short life of the Agriculture and Rural Development (A+RD) Network  so far, in particular between the two intense periods of activities linked to the Face-to-face events. (more…)

By Nara Weigel

In her first blog post A Treasure of SDC Experiences in Managing and Supporting Networks: 7 Guides to Make it your Own, Nara Weigel presented the interlinked good practice guides available on the website of the Learning and Networking Division. This blog post, explores two of the guides in more detail: nurturing networks and managing the membership of SDC networks. Two users of the guides share their first reactions, personal reflections and further lessons from their daily work as network focal point and backstopper. (more…)

By Dorothee Lötscher, Agridea

“We learn from suffering together” – this statement of a regional focal point of the Global Forum for Rural Advisory Services (GFRAS) expresses some of the key elements of learning in networks: multi-directional exchange between peers, collaboration based on trust and encouragement, and learning from cases. Networking is challenging and time-consuming, but leads to members’ moments of success, motivation, and finally sustainability. Intangible outputs play thereby an important role. Find below how GFRAS regional focal points and the GFRAS executive secretary experience their networking activities, how they deal with tangibles and intangibles, and what this might mean for networks in general. (more…)

by Kuno Schläfli, Romana Tedeschi, Katharina Walker, Michael Reimann, Matthias Boss, and Adrian Gnägi

SDC used to be structured as a matrix organization. Operational geographic units managed funds and local context, technical units managed thematic knowledge, and together they were thought to implement effective projects. This setup became perceived to have improvement potential. In 2008, technical units were replaced by learning and exchange networks. One of the justifications for this move was that guidance and policies elaborated by the technical units were sometimes perceived to be too abstract, too general, not enough evidence based. One of the expectations towards the newly created networks therefore was that their guidance should look, feel, and act differently – “experience based good practice” was the orientation received. This post documents one of the first attempts by one of the new networks to distill “experience based good practice”.

SDC’s “decentralization and local governance network” (dlgn) met for its first-ever face-to-face encounter in November 2009 in Delhi. (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…)

By Tobias Sommer
Communities of practice in their traditional definition are every manager’s dream: on individual initiative, experts form informal communities out of pure interest in a subject to exchange their experiences, talk about new challenges and learn from each other, pushing their field forward and developing new solutions. Ideally, all of this would happen alongside normal work, stay out of organisational structures and employment agreements, costing the company not time nor money nor energy – sort of a holy grail of knowledge management.

Sadly, as with anything that seems too good to be true, this hasn’t worked for a long time. In many organisations and companies, informal networks have lost their drive for several reasons, (more…)

An Interview with Simon Zbinden and Marylaure Crettaz

Interview: Manuel Flury

The SDC Agriculture and Rural Development (ARD) Network held its first face-to-face event in mid July 2010 in Cochabamba, Bolivia. 19 network participants from five continents participated in this workshop that has been organised with the support from the regional knowledge-sharing platform ASOCAM.
In addition to conventional presentations, Storytelling, Open Spaces, Knowledge Fairs and World Café made the exchange particularly fruitful. The event is entirely documented on the web.

Simon Zbinden, the Focal Point of the ARD Network and Marylaure Crettaz, a member of the core group talk about lessons to be learnt for others that are planning face-to-face events. (more…)

Private and public enterprises lose precious knowledge when experienced workers leave. What practical and well-tested methods exist that allow to capture these treasures of knowledge and experience, and thus to stay competent in times of organisational change?

This is the question addressed at the 3rd Symposium of the network savoir, organised in cooperation with the Swiss Knowledge Management Forum (SKMF) and tcbe.ch – ICT Cluster Bern under the heading

WHEN COMPETENCES LEAVE - STAYING COMPETENT

Knowledge Management in Action (more…)

By Michèle Marin
By now, a series of the SDC networks have come up with their first international f2f meetings.  The experiences reveal a few recurrent lessons to be learned, and trigger questions on how to best manage a f2f event. The SDC Learning & Networking team reflects upon them in a loose series of blog posts.  This first post considers the f2f event as a key moment of network development, and explores the adequate level of participation of network members before and during the meeting.

How do I organise a f2f event of a thematic learning network? Shall it rather be a thematic training or a network-development event? How much member-involvement in programming and preparation makes sense? Coming up with their first f2f-event, a series of SDC thematic learning networks have been facing this kind of questions. (more…)

The need for a trustful (learning) culture that is open for emerging patterns of collaboration

By Manuel Flury
SDC experiences a period of far reaching organisational change. The management informs the collaborators via the SDC-Intraweb and exchanges with the middle cadre. Collaborators share their questions in the cafeteria, chatting around filing cabinets and walking through the corridors:
“What thematic policies are still valid?” - “Is poverty alleviation now just one of several aims of SDC or still the main “raison d’être”?” – “Nobody knows exactly how thematic experts may bring in their concerns!” – “There is lacking information, and the interfaces are not clear.” – “The service level agreement  with the newly created support at Ministry level was elaborated without even consulting us.” - “The new regulations and guidelines for elaborating credit proposals are nowhere to be found on the Intraweb.” – “The guidelines for the office management report are just approved, there is no scope for any adjustments now.” (more…)

By Adrian Gnägi

This is the first post in a series focusing on network face-to-face events.

In October 2008 SDC changed its organizational structure: the former geographical/thematic matrix structure was changed into a single line operational structure. Thematic networks were created to exchange and capitalize experience. Until May 2010, 4 of the new networks had held their first face-to-face (f2f) meeting. This post sketches 6 issues which merit reflection when preparing and planning for future f2f events:

(more…)