'Knowledge Management
is a buzz word, so, what are your 'knowledge services'?"
queried the head of multinational body.
"What IS knowledge management?" asked a head of a non-governmental
organisation.
"How can my organisation benefit from management services,
'knowledge' or otherwise?" queried another development worker.
At Samanvaya, we face these questions often. Here is a brief write-up
on what is the 'knowledge' component and how we feel it makes
much difference for the development sector..
The way we perceive our life and work is
based on the knowledge that we possess at any point of time. Knowledge
of organisations determine the way they respond to situations, changes
around them; it shapes and provides them with a direction in this ever
changing world.
Commercial organisations seek knowledge as they grow. Often an entrepreneur
who starts an organisation realises that his initial knowledge of products,
market and processes are not adequate for growth. Hence, organisations
hire people who bring in skills, experience and learning from other
places. Larger organisations have their in-house research wing consistently
monitoring various trends, and providing inputs to the organisation
so that they factor in the changes happening in the environment / domain
where they operate.
Because of constant change in their domain area and their own growth,
Development Organisations too realise the need for enhancing their knowledge.
However, it is not always a visible component for them. Commercial firms
have a specific product or service, which caters to specific markets
with certain traits. There are certain development sector organisations
which have organised themselves similarly; they follow the route of
commercial organisations in pursuing their knowledge needs also. They
can either hire or build their knowledge component in-house. And some
of the larger ones do have a large research segment too.
However, the largest segment of development organisations cannot define
their domains of work like commercial firms and this is understandable.
If they are concerned with people and their problems, either in a single
location or in various locations, their work itself changes with changes
in the priorities of people. Many times development workers in villages
double up as career counselors, primary health consultants, economic
advisors, small money lenders in times of acute need, teachers, and
many more roles that a trustful society bestows on them. They need to
respond (and indeed people expect them to respond) to the changes in
society, in politics, in the environment, economic condition, etc. A
development organisation that has won the trust of people perhaps faces
this situation many times over each day.
Amidst this, it is very difficult
for the organisation to specify the nature and scope of it's intervention.
An organisation working with SHGs (self-help groups) will have to take
part in the local festivals, an organisation doing village level health
intervention needs to understand the social changes contributing to
health needs and priorities,…these cannot be ignored. However,
this also is time consuming. It leaves very little time for other things,
including, assessing their own learning, understanding the knowledge
that they are accruing to the larger understanding of rural Indian life
and the changes happening there. This knowledge component to which they
contribute, and the awareness of which could provide them with more
insights into their own work is lost on such people. However, the more
significant is the opportunity lost because they could not respond with
understanding to a certain situation.
Where are the knowledge components
of development coming from?
Government, Media, Academia, People, Publications, Weather…things
all around us. To understand the pattern underlying the things happening
around us, correlate them and draw the right inferences for furthering
our objectives now, and make plans for future is to effectively manage
one's learning and knowledge.
How does one know that one lacks
such learning and knowledge management?
When we repeat mistakes - "I
know why this is happening, I know because I have analysed and understood
this before, but, I cannot take corrective action because < >,
so…" one can fill up the brackets. When this happens we know
that we have some critical learning component missing.
"We have tried to follow some
systems before, it somehow doesn't seem to work, somehow there is a
lack of enthusiasm to adhere to our own systems", is another common
complaint. This indicates that an organisation has the components of
knowledge management, however, it does not know how to prioritise and
articulate the same.
"We were expecting this to change,
but, things don't seem to change at all" or "This change amidst
the people seem to have suddenly come in, we don't know what to do",
lacking in responses to situation, being caught unprepared always indicates
not having adequate systems in place for learning and assimilating knowledge
in the organisation.
"Things happened so suddenly,
we have grown rather fast. Now we seem to be not able to cope with the
growth, but, the opportunity that has come our way is so big, we can
really make a difference…" is a common growth NGO statement.
Such organisations always are being caught unprepared, in fact, the
thing they anticipate the most is when they will be next caught unprepared.
Here a major missing component is acknowledgement and understanding
of knowledge management.
Fine. The list above is convincing enough in terms of scenarios - most
people in the development sector for a length of time would have encountered
these one time or another either in their own organisations or in others.
Simply stated, the Knowledge Management System, (for lack of any other
term, though systemising is an almost-oxymoron to learning and knowledge)
is a combination of tools, methods and techniques through which organisations
learn to do the following:
Observe
Think
Discuss
Enjoy / Celebrate
This list may sound simplistic to people who think KMS is much buzz.
But if we notice, this is exactly what organisations fail to do. We
can provide the following most heard sentences in the development organisations,
as proof:
"…was that so? I failed to notice it, I wasn't observing"
"I did observe, but, didn't think about it!"
"…we should have discussed this a bit more before we started
it, otherwise < >could have been avoided…"
The last component that we have in the KMS list above - to enjoy / celebrate
- is a value, if suggested, may even elicit rhetoric from some. However,
it is true that those who can enjoy what they do often have the capacity
to look at more options than those who fail to enjoy their work. It
may often be construed as a bad joke to ask some one, say, working with
terminal patients, to enjoy. But, human suffering is not meant to be
completely downloaded through development workers into the world and
they don't have to behave thus. And, human nature is such that amidst
the worst of suffering too, there are little victories of challenge
overcome, little moments of success achieved that could be celebrated,
relished, enjoyed.
Building a Knowledge Management System for a development organisation
is basically to build a process through which each member of the organisation
can observe, be aware of what goes on all around, can think about the
observations, can discuss, share their thoughts and observations with
other around and in the process build their individual and organisational
knowledge. An understanding of the value of a KMS in itself is a celebration.