www.microlinks.org/learningorganizations
March 4-6 2008

About the discussion:
Microenterprise and other development organizations work in a complex and changing environment in which they hope to make positive changes. Knowledge of this environment and how local people perceive it, designing an appropriate intervention strategy, and adapting to new developments all require continuous and effective learning. In reality, however, most microfinance organizations or microenterprise development programs allocate hardly any time or resources to knowledge management and learning. As a result, organizations tend to repeat the same mistakes or remain in the dark as to why their actual performance is different from their stated mission and goals.

Documents

BELO Speaker's Corner Compilation Document    BELO Speaker's Corner March 4-6 2008.pdf     Publication Date   04/2008      
Navigating Learning: The What, Why and How of Becoming More Effective Learning Organizations    BELO_SC_Summary.pdf     Publication Date   04/2008      
Image of the Knowledge Pyramid    knowledge pyramid.ppt              
Infosys KM case study    Infosys KM case study -SSharma -APO 2008.pdf              
Overview of KM Measurements in some APO Member Countries    Overview of KM measurements from APO survey -Talisayon.pdf              
Excerpt: Motivating Knowledge Workers: Attending to both "Heart" and "Head"    Motivating K Workers -from APO survey.pdf              
How much to invest in KM/OL?    IPHRI.pdf              
Lessons AMAP-BELO, Practical Action (Part II)    Lessons from AMAP-BELO, part 2, Nov 2007.pdf     Publication Date   11/2007      
Practical Action's Lessons from the AMAP-BELO project (Part I)    Lessons from AMAP-BELO, Aug 2007.pdf     Publication Date   08/2007      
We're Too Much in 'To Do' Mode: Action Research into Supporting International NGOs to Learn        Publication Date   01/2007      
Tools for Knowledge and Learning: A guide for development and humanitarian organisations        Publication Date   07/2006      
Organisational Learning in NGOs: Creating the Motive, Means and Opportunity        Publication Date   01/2005      
Implementing Knowledge Strategies: Lessons from international development agencies        Publication Date   01/2005      
Putting Information Technology, Information Management, and Knowledge Management into Context    IT-IM-KM-Relationship.doc              
Learning for Development: A literature review        Publication Date   2004      
Learning for Change: Principles and practices of learning organizations        Publication Date   01/2002      
AAR template    AAR Template - Capuring Learning.doc              
AAR Toolkit    AAR Toolkit.pdf              
Your Personal Learning Plan    LearningPlan.pdf              

Discussions

Becoming more Effective Learning Organizations ID: 21840

Subject	Views	new	Posts
RE: Digest for 03-07-2008 Just wanted to say many thanks for the opportunity of joining this microlinks discussion. Though I was not able to to actively share my views this time around, it was great to follow the discussion ...	486		1
CONCLUSION Dear Participants:I want to thank all of you for a very rich and inspiring discussion. There have been more than 100 posts over these three days, all offering very unique insights and experiences ...	538		4
Re: Day 3. Learning from Mistakes [Becoming more Effective Learning Organizations] Hi Tony,How to learn from mistakes, or merely how to discuss them, is a continuing challenge to me and my colleagues in my NGO. I cannot say we have the solutions, but perhaps we have some useful ...	546		2
Day 3. What does it take to convince Senior Management and Donors of the Importance of KM/OL and measuring for results? As mentioned in the previous email, I would like to open this thread to focus on the second pertinent question for today's topic: What is needed to convince senior management and donors of the ...	552		3
Day 3. How much should we invest in KM/OL-related activities? A preliminary research Despite the caveats of the methodology, we concluded that investments between 7.7% and 5% of total project budget are sufficient to produce a perception of high impact of KM/OL-related activities in ...	593		2
A message from Ramona Miranda-Practical Action, Sri Lanka (via Lucho Osorio) Dear all, I have read with interest some of the postings from the previous two days of discussion – I unfortunately was not available to participate but would have liked to have joined you.   ...	705		3
Re:Closing the Loop Hi Sybil,I am not familiar with NICRA. Does it cover generic overhead costs?Perhaps one way to obtain budgetary commitment for KS&L from upper management is to use the findings of Pfeffer and ...	501		3
Day 3 of the discussion Dear participants,I want to use this occasion to thank Lucho for facilitating today's discussion and sharing so much of his own experiences at Practical Action. And I am most grateful for his summary ...	543		8
Re: Day 2. Tools/ approaches: Document Repositories Hi everyone,My more important learning experiences are those moments when I discover my own (hitherto unconscious) limiting assumptions. Others may call it "getting out of your mental box" or ...	511		3
Day 3. From individual to organizational learning: an emergent process?     "YOU DO NOT NEED SOMETHING MORE TO GET SOMETHING MORE... THAT IS WHAT EMERGENCE MEANS"Murray Gell-Mann (Nobel Laurate)See this short video clip at: http://www.youtube ...	527		3
Re: Closing the Loop Hi Alison and Lucho,Besides triggering group reflection, what is the key feature of Stories of Change? Does it also seek to generate group energy when discussions focus on "what went right" (ala ...	503		3
Learning from our interventions long after they finished (by Kath Pasteur) Kath Pasteur is not registered in this Speakers Corner but she asked me to post the following message about a long-term, ex-post evaluation she is involved in. It focuses on some of our most ...	464		2
Re: Day 3: MONEY VALUE OF LEARNING Hi Sybil and colleagues,Sybil asked: If you were to put a value on the knowledge your organization generates would you be able to? Would you be able to assign it a figure in a program budget? If so, ...	454		1
Day 1: What's the big deal? Why focus on knowledge sharing and learning? Thank you Jan for such a great introduction to this very important topic of knowledge management. I fully agree that knowledge is the most critical asset of any development organization and that ...	953		31
DAY 2. Welcome Message and kick off-points/questions by Lucho Osorio     Thanks so much to Jan and Sara for promoting a very interesting discussion so far. I have been fascinated with the richness of ideas, challenges and solutions coming from all ...	556		5
Re: Lessons Learned by Practical Action during the AMAP-BELO project (Part I) Hi Lucho,I like your catchy chapter titles! I wanted to download this document but I cannot find it in the list athttp://www.microlinks.org/ev_en.php?ID=21337_201&ID2=DO_COMMUNITY#discussionWhere ...	460		1
AMAP-BELO, Practical Action. Lessons (Part II) Dear all:I recently uploaded the second document with insights and lessons from our process in the AMAP-BELO project.  It contains the following:What is our approach?Why did we choose this ...	509		1
Lessons Learned by Practical Action during the AMAP-BELO project (Part I)     Dear all:I recently posted a document that distils some provisional lessons from our participation in the AMAP-BELO project. For a sneak preview of its contents see below ...	495		1
Re: DAY 2. tools/approaches: AFTER-ACTION REVIEWS (AARs) [Becoming more Effective Learning Organizations] Hi Ben,My NGO assisted another NGO, the Malampaya Multipartite Monitoring Team, in forming the LO habit of doing a form of AAR which we call Lessons-Learned Meeting or LLM. This organization is ...	429		2
Attachments / Resource Section Hi everyone,As we move into Day 3 of our discussion, I just want to remind everyone that if you have documents you want to share, please send them to us and we'll post them in the documents section on ...	471		1
Day 2. Tools/ approaches: Document Repositories Many of us yesterday talked about our experiences with document repositories. I would love to learn more from people's experiences regarding their document repository. 1. Taxonomy / Lexicon - h ...	465		8
DAY 2. tools/approaches: STOCKTAKING Mike McGahuey proposed Stocktaking:"Stocktaking, unlike End-of-Project Evaluations, typically takes place several years after the end of an NRM project.  It focuses exclusively on ...	460		2
Re: Day 1 : How to do a knowledge assessment Hi Denise, Jan and Anna,Thanks for your interest in the checklist. I think it may be useful for others that I post this in the discussion list for all to read.The logic behind the Capability ...	558		1
DAY 2. tools/approaches: OPEN SPACE TECNOLOGY Daan Boom proposed ...Open Space Technology (OST) is a way to convene people for a conference, retreat or meeting. "Technology" in this case means 'tool' - a process; a method. Attendees are asked to ...	597		1
DAY 2. tools/approaches: END OF PROJECT EVALUATIONS I created this "box" for you all to contribute in case you have used END OF PROJECT EVALUATIONS or are planning on using them. Thanks, Lucho Osorio - Practical Action.	532		1
DAY 2. tools/approaches: AFTER-ACTION REVIEWS (AARs) This tool was proposed by Ben Ramalingam:  "After Action Reviews (AARs) seem to be the most simple tool in the world, but in fact the way in which they are used often means that they cannot ...	485		1
DAY 2. A summary of points that have called my attention I would like to thank all of you who have contributed and read the messages so far.  (by the way, it is incredible and exciting that in this moment there are 170 people registered in this ...	456		1
DAY 2: TOOLS AND APPROACHES (INTRO) Dear all:As you all know the description of today's discussion is:Day 2 (March 5): Becoming more effective at learning - Based on existing needs, what steps can organizations or programs take, or what ...	494		2
DAY 2. tools/approaches: BLOGS I created this "box" for you all to contribute in case you have used blogs or are planning on using themThanks,Lucho Osorio - Practical Action	477		1
DAY 2. tools/approaches: COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE Denis Semartin's message reminded me about what she calls "Thematic Learning Communities" (TLC). We have been calling them communities of practice (CoP).Are they the same? I imagine so.We have tried ...	520		2
Day 1 (cont): How to do a knowledge assessment Hi Sara and other colleagues,That is true. Some people are more reflective than others (in MBTI, "I" and "P" people are more reflective than "E" or "J" people).From our experiences, the following may ...	473		4
DAY 2: tools/approaches: Knowledge Sharing Resources   Lucho and others,As you know, in addition to yourselves, a great number of other individuals and organizations have committed considerable time and resources to the study of knowledge ...	573		2
DAY 2. tools/approaches: RELAY TRAINING Relay training is basically an informal peer training approach. If one of our staff receives training or attends a conference about an issue that is potentially interesting to other staff ...	467		1
DAY 2. tools/approaches: EMAILS Let's begin with an (apparently) easy one: THE INFAMOUS AND OMNIPRESENT EMAILSNo one can deny that these tool is versatile and powerful for low-cost learning. How many times we get valuable info ...	516		1
Day 1 (cont): Conversations and Documents -- the meat and potatos of knowledge sharing Throughout the threads so far we keep coming back to two basic tools that improve knowledge sharing: 1. Creating opportunities for dialog 2. Systematically managing documents and o ...	487		4
Re: Day 1 (cont): How to do a knowledge assessment     Hello Jan and folks:First, thanks so much for everyone sharing their thoughts and experiences. I'm finding it really helpful to learn from these examples and discussion.To ...	453		5
Re: Day 1 (cont): How to do a knowledge assessment [Becoming more Effective Learning Organizations] Hi Sara, From our experiences, people tend to dislike answering long questionnaires or assessments. We had to devise/evolve easier and more interesting ways to do assessments. Developing KM ...	452		2
Day 1: What's the big deal? Why focus on knowledge sharing and learning? The last few posts bring up some key considerations for me regarding learning -- is this a process which supports innovation and knowledge transfer or is it also, as Luis points out, also an end ...	443		1
Needs assessment. Practical Action's experiences Hi all: Before this first day finishes I would like to share with you some practical stuff we have done in terms of needs assessment. This might sound dead obvious but what we in Practical ...	526		1
Day 1 (cont): How to do a knowledge assessment Sarah Reidy made a great sec way into our second topic for today when she said: "We spent one year inventorying what we had and how it was currently stored" Assessment is a major part of get ...	663		3
Re: Day 1 (cont): Conversations and Documents -- the meat and potatos of knowledge sharing Dear colleagues,I feel that the questions Sara posed at the start of Day 1, namely which goals of KM are more important, and which she again asked in two other postings, namely how we balance ...	489		1
More ways to share your experiences Hi everyone,Thanks to everyone for all the excellent points made so far. There is a lot of learning about learning to do! Just a few comments: - Not everyone might be talking about explicit versus ...	546		1
Day 1 (cont): Programmatic and field knowedge sharing vs Office / organizational knowledge sharing - key differences A theme that I see emerging in the conversation that Lucho and I frequently discuss is: What are the key differences between programmatic / field based knowledge sharing and organizational / offi ...	470		3
RE: Day 1: What's the big deal? Why focus on knowledge sharing and learning? Hi Lucho -Thanks! You raised some really interesting ideas. Let me respond to some of them:-You talked about explicit vs. other types of learning. Doh! This is obvious but somehow I'd forgotten it ...	541		2
Day 0: Welcome to this Speaker's Corner: An Introduction and Overview Welcome to the 22nd edition of the MicroLINKS Speaker’s Corner on "becoming more effective learning organizations", a discussion that has attracted more than 150 participants, a record! This Speaker’s ...	503		1
Welcome Welcome to this online discussion forum on Becoming a More Effective Learning Organization! This is the main event area where messages will be posted on March 4 -6. To participate, please e-mail us at ...	8019		1
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