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How to create an immersive workshop experience, where your participants bathe in the juices of the workshop’s topics? Immersive doesn’t require virtual reality headsets, foremost it requires a story. Here a practical example.

Nadia von Holzen, learning moments and Hynek Bures, dubbed perceptions

For the DDLGN 2018 face-to-face event, we – Nadia as facilitator and Hynek as multimedia reporter – came up with a low-tech idea to tell the network’s background story: A timeline that portraits the network, its members, its achievements.

For your info: SDC’s face to face events are organized by the agency’s thematic networks, where participants exchange on the networks’ topics. In this case on democratization, decentralization, and local governance. This year’s event coincided with the network’s ten years anniversary.

The timeline

On the wall of the main event hall, we drew a horizontal line using a colorful scotch: a Washi tape. Each year with a different color. Below this timeline we asked the network core team to add key events, or publications in form of a picture or a short text. We then took Polaroid pictures of all participants on their arrival and added them above the line according to the year they joined the network.

Immerse into history

From the first step into a cave with ancient paintings on the wall, or into the Sistine Chapel you are enveloped by the story of the place. Though less monumental, the timeline – its images from past events and the participants’ faces – has a similar effect: The networks history, its achievements enter the hearts of the participants: They become aware of their part in the story.

Enrich the learning process

While moderating participants’ interactions and reflections, Nadia would come back – time again – to the timeline: For example, recalling a past event or a key document to which present interactions make reference. We both felt that the historic background heightened the thematic complexity. It enriched the discussions among participants. New ideas were anchored in history. They had a reason to emerge, because they are part of a process that didn’t just start with this event.

Reflect on your learning

One of Nadia’s key moderation tools is to let participants reflect on how their personal learning process feeds back into the network, changes their role as a member, or impacts their day-to-day job. The timeline played a key role in taking the participants on this meta-level journey. Without this visual tool, the participants would have struggled to let go of the immediate lessons assimilated and focus on the bigger picture: Reinforcing the network’s culture of learning and sharing.

Propel actors to take action

The last day of the workshop a list of next steps was proposed. Participants could subscribe to which activity they wanted to contribute with their expertise and time. The timeline serves here as a constant reminder and assurance, that their effort is not in vain. Their action will contribute to the network’s future story: a continuous enrichment of thematic expertise.

Do it yourself

Key to reap the most beautiful fruits from your timeline is to give it a presence, a role, in your workshop. Start by creating it yourself! Make it beautiful in your eyes. A visually appealing timeline will attract the participants’ attention. During the workshop, this attention should transform into an interaction with the timeline. For this you should keep the timeline in mind when you plan your workshop. For example, provide time for the participants to interact with it. Then during the event, make recurrent links to your timeline. For example, introduce the next workshop slot with a short backstory.

Let’s conclude

Yes, the timeline is all about the story: the story of a network, of a program, or of a theme. But don’t focus your story on the product or the output. Behind every good story is a hero. Thus, to create a time-line that touches your audience, tell your story through them, through the people.

There is no shortcut in learning to facilitate. The best teacher is practice followed by observation and reflection through peer exchange, trainings and reading. Facilitation is creative work. Every workshop is an invitation to build anew the reflection and conversation space for participants to explore, learn and understand. This blog post presents three books for facilitators, beginners as well as experienced facilitators; they provide insights and ideas for planning and designing successful workshops

Nadia von Holzen, Learning Moments (more…)

In SDC learning is taking place in the networks – learning about approaches, about experiences and about good practices. The networks meet regularly in f2f-events in order to engage in this learning. But does it have an effect? What is the outcome of these events? By Beverly Wenger-Trayner, co-author of the Value Creation Framework

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Kanban is a Japanese word which signifies «visual signal». In the industry, for instance in car production kanbans are used to singnalize important information in the workflow: When do I need to reorder materials, for instance. The idea of kanban has spread to other industries in the last 15 years. Two pioneers of kanban in knowledge work are David Anderson and Jim Benson. They started using kanban to optimize the flow of work for individuals, teams or whole organisations. If you are interested in their work, you can read «Personal Kanban» by Jim Benson and Tonianne de Maria Barry or «Kanban – successful evolutionary change for your organisaton» by David Anderson. Using kanban for your own individual work is fairly straightforward and easy. What is demanding is to keep using it and evolving with it. 

By Nadja Schnetzler

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 SDC Programme Officers of West Africa and the Horn of Africa engaged in a joint learning process on pastoralism. In a series of meetings they collected, synthesized and exchanged experiences in eight key topics of this area. Manuel Flury and Charlotte Nager take a step back and reflect about the added value and the limitations of such an experience capitalization process.

By Manuel Flury, SDC, Addis Ababa and Charlotte Nager, SDC, Berne

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This post tells the story of documenting a learning process. The initiative to systematize experiences in the area of pastoralism was launched in collaboration with the Agriculture and Food Security network. The Learning & Networking team decided to document exactly this process. Two ‘reporters’, Charlotte Nager and Hynek Bures, joined the workshop in Kenia, where around 20 people gathered to learn from each others’ experiences in the field of pastoralism. While the participants were involved in thematic thinking the two ‘reporters’ added an additional layer of reflection. This challenging endeavor will hopefully inspire future stories about learning.

By Hynek Bures, dubbed perceptions (more…)

You definitely participated once in your live in a team building exercise: Several teams compete with each other. The lessons learned are about the organization of the team. In a recent similar experiment the question was: “What is the knowledge interaction among teams in a competing situation and how do the knowledge patterns change with changing competition rules?”

Ernst Bolliger, Agridea (more…)

The KM4dev discussion: Lessons Learned – The Loch Ness Monster of KM made us think about our own practice of drawing and using lessons learnt. Our conclusion: We need a more agile practice of drawing and using lessons learnt.

By Manuel Etter and Nadia von Holzen, SDC

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The crew of the Swiss Cooperation Office (SCO) Moldova is member in several networks of the Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC). They are engaged and sometimes busy absorbing the wealth of information coming from networks. The team has expectations but also a few ideas how to tame the information beast and how to make networking time more valuable. (more…)

The model town BuraNEST in Ethiopia is a learning project involving inhabitants, local masons, carpenters, female soil workers, and the planners and architects from Addis Ababa and Zurich. The blog post from Manuel Flury demonstrates that learning happens “on the job” “while doing” and that joint reflection and celebrating are important rituals in learning. (more…)

Networks and result orientation of development programmes? Yes! While the network members are busy with result monitoring and reporting the networks are well positioned to gain an overview and to support this task. Two networks developed reference indicators in their domain of expertise. Result reporting is a great entry point to feed the networks’ learning back into the operations. (more…)

Connecting to peers, being exposed to new thinking and exchanging experiences are most valuable to members of the Democratization, Decentralization and Local Governance network (DLGN). Storytelling on knowledge sharing and learning within the DLGN network suggests that this networking translates into concrete innovations in the field. (more…)

A recent lunch event at SDC in Bern sparked some interesting thinking. It featured guest speaker Kerstin Kude-Osman from the Academy for International Cooperation, a part of the German development agency GIZ. Kerstin told us about the recently developed Joint Learning Journey (JLJ) method, which is a way to bring small groups of people involved and interested in a particular set of issues together, to come up with effective and innovative ways of doing things better. (more…)

Complex situations resist our analytical capacities, they are unpredictable. In these situations, we cannot base our decisions on data. Hence, our decisions often based on intuition, gut feeling, and rules of thumb. Through continuous learning, we can train our intuition and become better equipped to manage our projects in complex environments. (more…)

By Nadia von Holzen, SDC

Learning has many facets, colours and forms. Tracey Martin wrote a poem on his very personal personal reflection on learning, what it means to him, how it happens and how incredible precious it is.

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Make your face-to-face meetings more learner-centered to foster stronger commitment and greater learning. Networks’ face-to-face meetings are a great opportunities for learning. What does it need to make it a learning happening? How do adults learn? What are the key ingredients to be taken into account already at the planning stage? (more…)

HIGHLIGHT

The next week’s NeuroLeadership Summet in New-York. A brain friendly f2f meeting. (more…)

This blog post asks about the motivation of reading our sdclan Blog. We are curious to know why you – dear blog reader – are with us, week for week, reading our posts and the posts of our guests. (more…)

“Good practice” or even “best practice” are ubiquitous terms in international cooperation, commonly designating one of the keys to successful development work. In SDC, particular network-structures for learning in thematic domains have been conceived to continuously “develop Good Technical Practice”. Yet, what does this mean at all? With today’s article the SDC Knowledge and Learning processes division introduces a new electronic working aid, meant as practical guidance for new SDC-staff, as resourcekit for more experienced ones.

By Michèle Marin

“Good practice” or even “best practice” are ubiquitous terms in international cooperation and the running issue of any Learning Organisation. In SDC, particular network-structures have been conceived to “develop Good Practice” in selected technical areas (e.g. Water, Gender, financial management etc.). Commonly designating one of the keys to successful development work, it is yet hard to seize what the notion implies. Often used in relation with technical competence in a particular thematic area, e.g. the “how to do” in agriculture, it can equally designate more general procedural and methodological quality of interventions.

In fact, the buzz word hides quite a story – let me illustrate it by one… (more…)

Make implicit knowledge explicit und thus accessible to everybody! This is a request I often come across dealing with knowledge management issues. In how far is this possible? Kitchen recipes make it clear: Basic knowledge and skills can be described, but what about mastery skills? There are limits in transforming implicit into explicit knowledge. (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…)

By Adrian Gnägi

Manuel Flury recently published a post on changing perspectives as opportunities for learning. When Manuel and I went for overseas postings in the middle of 2011, we decided to continue writing posts for sdclan. We wanted to document how the change of work context affects our way of understanding things. I have written several posts since moving to Laos. They all related to my former work situation: the post on the political economy of result terminologies was inspired by a course on impact monitoring I attended back in July, the post I wrote with dlgn colleagues on the “learning project” methodology reflected on our joint capitalization work on donor support for sustainable municipal finances during the past 2 years, and the post written with Bertha Camacho in August reflected on experiences with e-discussion campaigns we made in February. (more…)

By Riff Fullan, Helvetas Swiss Intercooperation

“If many people from different hierarchies and countries come together there are always those who think they know less about a subject and participate less in the discussion. They may be afraid to say something wrong. To start with personal stories demonstrates that everyone has a valuable experience to share and we can share it in the language we feel comfortable” (reflection of SDC gender team member on using stories in a workshop context, SDC Story Guide, p. 30).

Conscious engagement with storytelling for knowledge sharing and learning began almost 10 years ago within SDC and was pursued with some energy, especially in the first years. (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…)

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…)