Using brainstorming method to draw out ideas

In a recently held knowledge sharing event at IDLO, one of the issues that was presented was about a corporate tool (in this case an intranet portal for knowledge sharing (K-Café)) to encourage and cultivate knowledge sharing in an organization?

The unique problem with this issue was that the intranet was accessible only to 6 of the participants in the workshop. For this very reason, getting the "right" method for this session was critical for its success. I decided to try out a brainstorming method! Here is how the session went:

Issue/Background
The K-Café is a intranet Web site which offers a set of features and functions providing the best the virtual world can offer to optimize face-to-face and online interaction. The purpose of the K-Café is to provide a platform through which people can connect and share with each other their interests and ideas, in the spirit of knowledge sharing. Users can learn about colleagues who have a picture and profile, blog or comment on a posting within the Sharing in Action blog, ask a question, give an answer, and propose an event. The site also provides directory of knowledge sharing tools and methods.

In terms of promotion, the site has been announced on the log-on page, the intranet as well as through divisional registries. A newsletter is sent out every week with all changes to the site (latest events, posts, members, etc.). The current statistics (eliminating the visits from those who manage the site) show that the site is visited approximately 1500 times a month.

The K-Café was launched in May 2009. Since then it has seen steady growth in participants (now up at 197). The Sharing in Action blog has been the most active component of the site. The question and answer section, which had as its aim to facilitate dialogue and discussion around issues and hurdles related to knowledge sharing has been slow in uptake.

We think the rate of adoption (in terms of profiles created, questions asked and answered, blog postings made/commented on, and connections with others who can provide relevant expertise) of the K-Café should be faster than at present. We want to see what we could do in order to increase the rate of update; bearing in mind the time we can devote to working on this is limited.

So, the key issue was framed as:

What will it take for a corporate tool such as the Knowledge Sharing Portal (K-Café) to encourage and cultivate knowledge sharing in an organization?

Method Used
The method used for this session was a combination of the brainstorming method and card-sorting; it consisted of the following steps:

• The issue was introduced by giving demonstration of the intranet site as not everyone in the room (approximately 25 of 30 participants) knew about it.

• Everyone was asked to form groups of three or four and discuss ideas for addressing the above issue. Within these groups, the goal was to come up with 3-5 ideas that could help promote the use of the K-Café. The group was asked to write out each idea on a piece of paper (half A4).

• After approximately 10 minutes, once the groups had three to four ideas each, we formed a circle and each group was asked to give two or three of its best ideas to the facilitator.
• The facilitator then read out each idea and placed it on the floor in a horizontal row. If similar ideas emerged, they were placed in a column.
  
• Once the first round of ideas were placed, the facilitator asked for another 2 or 3 ideas per group which were NOT yet mentioned. This way, the wide array of ideas were on floor in the center. The facilitator followed the same procedure as before (reading out the cards, asking the participants to group them, etc.)
  
• This was repeated until everyone had given their best ideas.

The last step included looking at each column and finding the "action item" to group the ideas together (keeping the question in mind).

Results
For the K-Café to encourage and cultivate knowledge sharing in the organization, the following ideas emerged, amongst others:

1. Ensure unique positioning by putting some production tool on the K-Café that is unique, if not exclusive (i.e., a telephone directory)?

• make the Café unique by putting information there that one can not find anywhere else;
  
• a poll would also be useful to promote continuous interaction
  
• allow members to invite others
  

2. Clarify the purpose of the K-Café:

• do a 2nd launch emphasizing the positive effects the K-Café has had on the work of those who have used it, so far, as a way of evaluating and reframing the Café; expose the successes and the rewards
• explain how workload/productivity will decrease/increase and what’s in it for them
• enable a daily feature such as did you know that your colleague is doing this and this?
• include story-telling videos
• leverage Google analytics in order to see what parts of the K-Café are most visited, and when; this will help to better understand its usage and better target potential users
  

3. Promote the K-Café

• ask those who use it whether they know their neighbours and what they do
• have a staff member of the month content feature
• organise a field work photo contest on the K-Cafe
• implement ranking of questions and answers
• organise hands-on introductory sessions
• organise more prototype exhibition sessions to show how the K-Café works and explain why people would find it useful if they use it
• Mainstream the use of the K-Café by ensuring at least one person from each department is a member, include membership of K-Café and its active use in performance appraisals, etc.
• use raffle prizes to stimulate activity
• reward behaviours you would like to see evolve and develop
• explain what prompted the existence of the K-Café on the first page
  

4. Ensure best possible usability

• ensure open access from anywhere in FAO (field, HQ) and in particular build in an RSS feature

After Action Review on using the method

What worked well:

• In general, the method was perceived as both fun and interactive, especially in its mix of small-group and larger-group work. Participants enjoyed both the small group work and the larger group work.
• The method process was interesting in that it allowed for collective thoughts and suggestions for action to emerge from the participants group.
• The method is great for digging out/flushing out ideas from the group.
• The facilitator did a very good job in organising and sorting the ideas, always ensuring the agreement and participation of the group. She also did a very good job in keeping the interest of all participants high and their attention poised on the task being tackled.
• The room set-up worked very well.
  

What did not work so well:

• Time was not enough to clearly formulate suggestions for action to each idea.
• In itself, the method process is intense in that it requires a lot of group thinking. At times, the group attention faded and the burden fell a little too much on the facilitator.
  

What to improve for next sessions:

• Allow for more time to do the method with a short break in the middle.
• Work with pre-defined categories?
• Ask people to write their names next to each idea in order to help with the sorting process? (people can be asked to elaborate when ideas are not so clear)
  

Related posts:

• Facilitating as a team - few dos and don'ts
• Survey results show the recent KM4Dev Rome meeting was a success!
• Follow-up event to Share Fair: ‘Knowledge Sharing: Getting Together to Do It Better’.

What are the key ingredients for making effective presentations?

Early this month, I did a training course titled "Influencing your audience". The two-day course was intersting as I had the opportunity to learn not only about some of the tricks on how to ensure engagement from the audience but also the possibility to see myself present. We were all videod on each day of the training. There was considerable difference for most participants between the two days. Of course, watching oneself present can be nightmare, it also has positive side-effect in that it allows one to see what are the facial expressions, body movements, etc.

As we went through the lessons, we got lots of tips on ideas such as the magic of three, how the presentations normally work, etc. In this post, I will only be sharing with you some of the key factors that came out and might help you in making effective and useful presentations for your audience!

1. Ensure the presentation is relevant and focused. - This is obvious but sometimes we tend to wander around the bush a bit or drift. Stick to the point, put efforts in your message! Be precise and keep it simple - nothing is more boring than a presenter babbling on for too long without focus. Your audience will forgive you anything as long as you don't waste their time!
   
2. Ensure right balance of visual aids. - Make sure there is balance between images and words. If you are using embedded videos, test them during the break prior to your presentation. Use relevant and simple images/graphics.
   
3. Don't read. - Often, when there is lot of text on the screen, people will read on without listening to you and thus can be at a different point in the presentation than where you are! Make sure you provide only enough text to give the basic idea - the key message should come from you. Animation can help bring messages onto the screen when you want but don't make everything zoom in and out just because you (or powerpoint) can!
4. Involve the audience. - Ask an opening question and make the presentation a dialog rather than a one-way message. Change your rhythm to avoid a monotoneous monologue and make regular eye connection.
   
5. Start and end on time. - You don't want anyone to crop your lunch hour so don't do it for others!

I think the key message for me to take away from this training were:

• Plan - what you are presenting, what are your key messages, etc.
  
• Engage - make it a dialog; it doesn't all have to be one-sided!
  
• Practice - makes perfect!

Anything I missed that you would swear by? Leave me your tips!

Facilitating multinational Peer Assists

My name is Jo Cadilhon. I’m a technical officer in charge of marketing and quality improvement at FAO’s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. I’m also interested in discovering knowledge sharing tools and methodologies that will support and facilitate my technical work. As such it is an honour for me to be a guest blogger on Gauri’s mumblings..

Following on from my first guest post on using peer-assists to support face-to-face knowledge sharing, I would like to give my facilitator’s viewpoint on the two peer-assist workshops I facilitated at the Regional Agro-industries Forum for Asia and the Pacific (RAIF-AP). In particular, I wish to reflect on the challenges I faced to facilitate these peer-assists among multinational strangers.

I first discovered the peer assist methodology at a knowledge sharing course that Gauri organized for FAO and the CGIAR in October 2008 and found it was a great technique to use the knowledge of the people assembled in the group to try to solve real-life problems. However, the group had already interacted for a full month online and over three previous days face-to-face. We knew each others and could really relate to each other as peers. I wanted to try it on a technical issue and in a setting where the peers do not necessarily know each other that well but are all involved in a similar line of technical activity.

When the organizational committee of the RAIF-AP was pondering how to root the forum into real-life problems and avoid it becoming yet another talk shop, we decided to insert peer-assist workshops into the programme. This way, at least some of our participants selected to be peer-assistees would go home with something we hoped would be useful for them.

Before the forum we invited all forum participants to submit to the forum secretariat a problem they were facing and which was in line with the forum’s main technical topics of discussion. Out of around 90 prospective participants we received ten ideas for peer-assist workshops. My colleague Stepanka Gallatova selected nine of these she deemed were the most interesting and assigned them to each facilitator. Our limiting factor was the number of facilitators and meeting rooms available.

I ended up facilitating two peer-assists on the topic of develop quality in food marketing chains, which happens to be my area of technical expertise. However, I tried to keep to my facilitator’s role of inviting contributions from the peers assembled in the room. My two peer-assistees – both of whom I had worked with in the past – were a Burmese gentleman facing quality and safety problems in the oilseed industry of Myanmar (see: photo) and then a Sri Lankan gentleman describing processing and theft issues in the spice industry of his country.

The first challenge I faced even before the peer-assist had started is that my two peer-assistees had naturally prepared a powerpoint presentation to describe their problem. I had to invite them to reconsider their communication format as we had no projection technology available. I encouraged them to distill the information on their industry and the problem they were facing into just one poster chart. I also allowed them to bring print-outs of photos of the problem they faced and a poster describing the products involved.

There were four or five peer-assist workshops running in parallel and all forum participants were free to choose where they would go. I managed to get 6 to 8 peers in my sessions. Colleagues who facilitated peer-assists with only three peers reported that it went fine nonetheless. Thus, the number of peers in the room should not be seen as a limiting factor.

Once the peer-assist had started, the first objective was to get everybody familiarized with the problem being faced. I asked the assistee to describe his problem in five minutes. Then I paraphrased the key points to make sure I had understood correctly while also giving an opportunity for the peers to listen to the same story a second time but in a different wording and a somewhat neutral English accent. Finally, I invited the peers to ask questions to clarify the problem further.

Then I went round the circle of peers inviting each one to provide ideas on how to solve the problem while I took notes of the contributions on a flip chart for everybody to see.

I thought the oilseed peer-assist went really well as there was a good mix of peers: policy makers, technical experts in marketing and post-harvest handling, food safety consultants, and an NGO involved in developing food quality with farmers. The advice given ranged from very practical and technical actions to policy and nationwide oilseed industry development programmes to be considered. We also covered all the different stages of the marketing chain from the farmers to the consumers while considering the role of the different support organizations that could help tackle the problem being faced. The peers asked me to rearrange the content of the flip chart so that the contributions from the peers were reported following the different stages of the marketing chain. The peer-assistee has since then gone back to Myanmar, discussed the results of the workshop with his manager. He has already sent me back an action plan of how the project he is involved in to develop the oilseed sector will follow-up on the advice contributed by his peers.

Personally I thought the Sri Lankan spice peer-assist was not as successful because the peers got blocked by a fundamental problem for which nobody could find a solution. Sri Lankan spice growers see their harvest being stolen on the trees as early as three months before maturation of the crop! Therefore, all the other advice on how to improve the post-harvest treatment of spices was conditional to finding a solution to the theft problem. I believe I also made a mistake by starting the round of peer comments from my right side (just to change from the morning session where I started from my left side). However, it so happened that all the food safety and post-harvest international experts were sitting on that side; they gave lots of useful suggestions but they may have stolen the show as the subsequent contributions of the Laotians sitting on the other side did not sound as impressive, although they were still relevant.

I enjoyed the whole process. My two peer-assistees wrote to me later saying how useful the comments from their peers were. The other peer-assist facilitators, the rest of the participants and other coorganizers of the event also gave excellent feedback on the very relevant choice of this knowledge sharing method. It is testimony that peer-assists can be used in a multinational setting and with peers who do not necessarily know each other beforehand but who are all involved some way or another in a similar field of activity.

Using peer assists to support face-to-face knowledge sharing

This is a guest post by Jo Cadilhon, Marketing Officer (Quality Improvement) at FAO's regional office for Asia and the Pacific.

FAO, IFAD, the Shaanxi Provincial People’s Government (China) and UNIDO organized the Regional Agro-industries Forum for Asia and the Pacific (RAIF-AP) in November 2009.

After a first day of plenary and roundtable sessions to start the debate on actions and programmes that would contribute to sustainable and smallholder-inclusive agro-industries development in the region, participants were asked to join parallel peer assist sessions where a real agro-industries challenge submitted by one of the participants would be discussed.

The attendance to the peer assist workshop varied: three peers in the smallest group and up to 20 in the biggest. In the latter case, we restricted the number of contributing peers to 10 (a more manageable group for the facilitator) by placing ten chairs in the first circle while other participants could observe from the second row of chairs.

All the peer assistees were thrilled by the feedback and suggestions they got from their peers. The contributors realized that their experience of problems they had encountered in the past and managed to solve could be very useful for their peers in other countries who were facing similar problems.

Some verbatim feedback from the participants at the concluding session of the forum:

• Michael Commons, Earth Net Foundation, Thailand. “I really liked the peer assist format. I’d never done that before but I thought it was really kind of a cool thing. It shows there is a lot of knowledge in the area and that I don’t know; by being able to learn from other people and pull out that experience I think it is a very valuable process.”
• Umm e Zia, Cynosure Consultancy, Pakistan. “I just came out of a peer assist workshop which was fascinating for me because the problem that was presented to me already has a solution in areas that I have worked with and has been working for centuries or decades now.”

For more information, contact the facilitators of the RAIF-AP peer assist workshops:

• Jo Cadilhon (FAORAP)
• Stepanka Gallatova (FAO-AGS)
• David Kahan (FAORAP)
• Ayurzana Puntsagdavaa (IFAD)
• Rosa Rolle (FAORAP)
• Karl Schebesta (UNIDO)

Using audio blogs to disseminate information to farmers - BROSDI example

I recently posted my interview with Ednah Maramagi from BROSDI on how they channel knowledge to and from farmers. One of the ways that BROSDI disseminates information is through audio blogging. The audio blogs range from topics such as "How to grow bananas" to "How to rear cows".

Interview with Ednah Karamagi, Executive Director of BROSDI

I had the great pleasure of meeting Ednah Karamagi (@ednahkaramagi) during the KM4Dev Brussels meeting. She is the Executive Director of BROSDI or Busoga Rural Open Source and Development Initiative. I was fascinated by this initiative from Uganda as it was an excellent example of two-way knowledge and information flow - from the governments to the farmers and vice versa. The organization feeds information using information and communication technology (ICT) to farmers who further disseminate the information to other farmers. BROSDI also gathers information from the same farmers and pushes it up to the government. Listen to Ednah explain the flow in detail.



The one question that many participants from the huddle asked was "why aren’t we replicating examples such as BROSDI in other African countries?"

Peer Assist: What is local knowledge and how can we tap into it?

One of the areas we focused on during the recent KM4Dev meeting in Brussels (within the Agriculture Huddle) was the need to understand "how do we get local knowledge and issues back from communities (farmers) to the organizations actually working on the issues?"

To address this issue, we decided to do a Peer Assist. Here are the outcomes of the three questions we addressed.

1. What is local knowledge?

The grouped defined local knowledge as: "Knowledge applied and proven to have worked."

The problem of capturing local knowledge is at different levels and even if knowledge is captured, how can we make sure it goes to the right audience?

2. So, what do we need to have in place to facilitate the flow?

• We need individuals/institutions/networks who know who has what knowledge – sort of information intermediaries - to help with capturing
  
• Promote/teach the information mediaries about KS tools - process not just the technology
• Improve communication skills at different levels
  
• There is limited sharing/scaling up of best practices and this needs to be addressed
  
• Make research more demand driven by using some participatory methods such as the example of ICARDA's farmer's conference
• Install incentives to encourage learning and sharing of experiences
  
• Individuals need to understand that they need to look for what has been done before/while designing/doing programmes/projects - don't reinvent the wheel!
  
• Regional/National forums for sharing experiences – networking is extremely important and needs to be facilitated/improved.
• We are less willing to tell people what didn’t work - we need to change that.

3. Having identified the above possible solutions, what can donor, development and research organizations do?

• Donor agencies need to facilitate communication between other donors/projects.
• Donor agenda is changing fast hence there is lack of continuity although donors don’t work in vacuum and they work in collaboration with the national policy and thus it is a double edged sword.
• All organizations working a country X need to work together with each other.
• Capacity building needs to take place also at government level to recognise KS as an important issue
• Bring all stakeholders into a network so that there is regular communication between them.
  
• Organizations such as FAO need to make sure knowledge sharing becomes important part of the national policies that it helps develop at country level
• Obstacles to up/out scaling best practises – not being networked
• Add learning agenda into all the technical components of projects

Finally, the overarching (or underlying) issue in all of this is what's in it for me? What are the incentives and disincentives for sharing local knowledge? Here are some of the ideas that participants came up with:

• Farmers have knowledge and need recognition
  
• Capacity building as an incentive to do the job better
• Getting acknowledgement for work, career path (although this might encourage competition)
• Problems with the way science is set up - publishing copyright is still an issue.
• Power relations – people do participatory events in communities but not always bring the summary back
• Information overload and our resistance to new knowledge needs to be addressed
  
• Build trust – important social skill when working with farmers needs to be developed

The key ideas were captured by Nancy...

So, what are your key messages?

Today and tomorrow, I am taking a course on "influencing your audience". One of the illustrations the instructor made, which I found very interesting, related to how much effort we put into a presentation compared what is retained at the end by the audience. Here is an illustration of what he said was the "usual" trend.

100 % is what we put into a presentation planning
80 % is what we actually manage to put forward or deliver
60 % is what the audience may actually pick
40 % is what they might understand (influenced by language, topic, etc.)
20 % is what they actually find interesting

and finally

5% is what they will take with them (and I might add, if you are lucky!)

So, try to focus on your key messages and what you would like them to take away in those 5%!!