KM and Comms: How do you staff up to do both well?
Dear KM4Dev colleagues
I wonder if you’d be interested in contributing to a comparative exercise I’m conducting on behalf of IFAD’s Independent Office of Evaluation (IOE). They are considering how to gear up both their KM and communications efforts. The question is, how closely do these overlap and how best do you structure your staff team so you can do a good job in both areas?
IOE has a particular focus on sharing lessons from evaluations – but a lot of organisations face the same challenge. It depends how you define them, but KM and Comms are closely related and require similar skill sets. The ethos, purpose and target audiences may be slightly different, but in many organisations they are not that different.
So do you combine these functions in one team, or even one person? Or do you separate them but have them work closely together? Or do you treat them completely differently and house them in separate divisions?
I’m compiling a short report contrasting experience in different organisations, and would very much value your input.
How you can contribute
If you’re interested in responding, can I suggest two routes:
- If you have a quick comment to chip in, please comment on this post. Could be an interesting debate.
- If you have an hour to spare and would like to offer your organisation as a case study, please send me an email directly with a snapshot of your organisation, a short description of how it structures its KM and Comms work, and the pros and cons you see. If you can provide a simple organogram, and an outline of the various posts involved, all the better – but this isn’t vital. I can treat information provided in confidence if you’d prefer.
I will be collecting responses in July and compiling a short report in August, which I’ll post on the KM4Dev list.
Many thanks for helping out on this.
Best regards
Geoff
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Geoff Barnard
Tel: +44 1903 813232 Mob: +44 7510 314397
Skype: geoffreybarnard
Views: 124
Comment
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Comment by Ewen Le Borgne on December 7, 2012 at 4:31am -
Great!
I look forward to it then :)
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Comment by Geoff Barnard on December 5, 2012 at 7:10pm -
Thanks for the reminder Ewen. I need to get clearance to circulate the full report, but hope to get this soon.
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Comment by Ewen Le Borgne on December 5, 2012 at 10:09am
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Any final answer on this? I'd love to hear the results of your work :)
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Comment by Liah Machara on September 20, 2012 at 4:46am -
Sorry this might be too late......just a quck input,i also think that it it is best to merge the two because communications and KM go hand in hand.Comms actually form a base for KM, so KM to succeed there must be a good comms structure which is working effectively and hand in hand with KM
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Comment by Geoff Barnard on July 19, 2012 at 4:06am
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Hi Ewen - would love to talk. Just checked out your blog posts - love em! Especially the happy families. will ping you a direct message on connecting.
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Comment by Ewen Le Borgne on July 18, 2012 at 3:58am
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A quick comment: make them come together (e.g. my position at ILRI is 'knowledge sharing and communication specialist', so that people see comms as totally connected to KM/KS). The set up between KM and comms doesn't really matter, so long as the value of both streams of work are taken care of (for this you might want to have a look at: http://km4meu.wordpress.com/2012/03/26/power-your-communication-wit... )
I can share some stuff with you about ILRI but only in August I guess, unless you're ready for a short phone interview on the phone today or tomorrow? Sorry for the late notice, just snowed under but saw your post and meant to reply to it. All the best!
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Comment by Chase Palmeri on July 17, 2012 at 3:34am -
Hi Geoff, How nice to see this re-connect, Cleona who works with me mentioned this post on the bus to me this morning!!!! pls drop me a line.... ch.palmeri@ifad.org Chase
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