The Convergence of Agricultural Interventions in Maharashtra (CAIM) has organized orientation training on Knowledge Management to its programme staff on 9-10th May, 2011 at Probodhini, Amravati.
The first session began with a round of introduction of participants with their logo identity and why they selected a particular logo as their identity.
The next session as it was planned on Knowledge Audit, it is defined as Knowledge Audit helps organizations to identify knowledge based assets and development strategies to manage them. Similarly the knowledge audit can be used for multiple purposes and in particular to access what knowledge an organization needs, where that knowledge exists, how it can be used effectively, what problem and difficulties exists and how we can improve the situation in the organization. A kind of SWOT analysis was carried out during this session access the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats where the participants were divided into 4 groups to discuss among them and prepare the common findings.
Most Significant Changes
• Form of participatory monitoring and evaluation.
• Project stakeholders are involved both in deciding the desired change that to be recorded and in analyzing the data.
• Monitor the program cycle and provide information to help stakeholders to manage program.
• It contributes to evaluation of program providing the data an impact and outcomes that can be used to help assess the performance of the program.
• The collection and systematic analysis of significant change.
Purpose:
• It is a good means of identifying unexpected changes.
• It is a good way to clearly identify the values that prevail in an organization and to have practical discussion about which of those values are the most important.
• It is a participatory form of monitoring that requires no special professional skills.
• It encourages analysis as well as data collection because people have to explain why they believe one change is more important than another.
• It can build staff capacity in analyzing data and conceptualizing impact.
• It can deliver a rich picture of what is happening rather than an overly simplified picture where organizational, social and economic developments are reduced to a single number.
• It can be used to monitor and evaluate bottom-up- initiatives that do not have predefined outcomes against which to evaluate.
WHEN NOT TO USE MSC
· In a simple program with an easily defined outcome quantitative monitoring may be sufficient and would certainly consume less time than MSC.
WHEN TO USE MSC
• Complex and produce diverse and emergent outcomes.
• Large with numerous organizational layers.
• Focused on social change.
• Participatory in ethos.
• Designed with repeated contact between field staff and participant.
Outcome Mapping
· Outcome Mapping is used to track the process of change and contribute innovative dimensions to social and organizational learning.
· Framework for planning monitoring and Evaluation with focus on results and social change
· Development incremental/ Developmental evaluation
· Outcome Mapping access changes in the development players and how the programme hope to and was able to contribute or not to that change and why
· Outcome Mapping focuses on analyzing fundamental behavior changes and the contributions made to support those changes to tell stories of transformation from the outset of an intervention.
Social Network Analysis
The exercise on Social Network Analysis was carried to understand how many stakeholders are linked with programme staff.
Community Management The expert made a presentation on community management and explained how important is this is social development programme.
The Four Key words were introduced i.e. Knowledge-Wisdom-Kindness and understanding
Expectation
- - Gaining that which is not processed
- - Protecting whatever has gained
- - Making protected grow
- Principles
- - Right man at right place
- - Train them to do the job done
- - Make the community a coordinated team
- - Supply right tools and conditions to work
- - Give security with opportunity, incentive
- - Look ahead, plan ahead, for more better things
10 Point Programme
- - Decentralization
- - Community Driven Development
- - Institutional Development at all levels (formal and Informal)
- - Extended Network
- - Make community comfortable
- - Give Community a Lift
- - Give Support
- - Prepare Strategy
- - Implementation
- - Evaluation
The sustainable Livelihood Approach
- The sustainable livelihoods approach (SLA) is a way to improve understanding of the livelihoods of poor people. It draws on the main factors that affect poor people's livelihoods and the typical relationships between these factors. It can be used in planning new development activities and in assessing the contribution that existing activities have made to sustaining livelihoods
• A set of principles to guide action to address and overcome poverty
- How these people create a livelihood for themselves and their households.
- They have access to and use natural resources, technologies, their skills, knowledge and capacity, their health, access to education, sources of credit, or their networks of social support.
- The extent of their access to these assets is strongly influenced by their vulnerability context viz: economic, political, technological, epidemic, natural disaster, seasonality (prices, production employment.)
- The framework is neither a model that aims to incorporate all the key elements of people's livelihoods, nor a universal solution. Rather, it is a means of stimulating thought and analysis, and it needs to be adapted and elaborated depending on the situation
SLA has seven guiding principles
• Be people-centered. SLA begins by analyzing people's livelihoods and how they change over time. The people themselves actively participate throughout the project cycle.
• Be holistic. SLA acknowledges that people adopt many strategies to secure their livelihoods, and that many actors are involved; for example the private sector, ministries, community-based organizations and international organizations.
• Be dynamic. SLA seeks to understand the dynamic nature of livelihoods and what influences them.
• 
Build on strengths. SLA builds on people's perceived strengths and opportunities rather than focusing on their problems and needs. It supports existing livelihood strategies.
• Promote micro-macro links. SLA examines the influence of policies and institutions on livelihood options and highlights the need for policies to be informed by insights from the local level and by the priorities of the poor.
• Encourage broad partnerships. SLA counts on broad partnerships drawing on both the public and private sectors.
• Aim for sustainability. Sustainability is important if poverty reduction is to be lasting.
Conducting Effective Meeting
People spend so much time in meetings that turning meeting time into sustained results is a priority for successful organizations. Actions that make meetings successful require management before, during, and after the meeting.
If you neglect any one of these meeting management opportunities, your meetings will not bear the fruit you desire from the time you invest in meeting. Take these twelve meeting management actions to guide meeting attendees to achieve expected, positive, and constructive outcomes.
“PEOPLE DON’T PLAN TO FAIL, THEY FAIL TO PLAN”
PLAN THE MEETING
• Effective meetings begin with meeting planning. First, identify the employees to plan the meeting. Then, decide meetings goal. Establish doable goals for your meeting.
• As Stephen Covey says in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, "Begin with the end in mind." Your meeting purpose will determine the meeting focus, the meeting agenda, and the meeting participants.
IDENTIFY TYPE OF PARTICIPANT
| SRNO | TYPE | HABIT | SOLUTION |
| 1 | Monopoly | Act Only wise person | Let other speak |
| 2 | Tangent Talker | Divert main topic | Get back on track |
| 3 | Devil's | Meeting spoiler | Make them monitor |
| 4 | Cynic | Negativity | Arrange fight with devil |
| 5 | Fence Sitter | Bad discussion maker | Take them in actions |
| 6 | Pandora's Box Opener | Open emotional subject | Get back on track |
| 7 | Invisible | Stay away from sight | Make them to act |
| 8 | Attacker | Always challenge | Keep a positive attitude |
| 9 | Joker | Creates jokes always | Designate some time for humor |
| 10 | Robots | Gadget guru | Be ready with T&C Rules & Regulations for electronics viz -mobiles, ipads, lap top etc. |
An appropriate participant is must who attend for the meeting to succeed. The needed attendees must be available to attend the meeting. Postpone the meeting rather than holding a meeting without critical staff members. If a delegate attends in the place of a crucial decision maker, make sure the designated staff member has the authority to make decisions – or postpone the meeting.
To make meetings most productive and ensure results by providing necessary pre-work in advance of the actual meeting. Providing pre-work, charts, graphs, and reading material 48 hours before any meeting affects meeting success. The more preparation time you allot, the better prepared people will be for your meeting.
Effective use of meeting time builds enthusiasm for the topic. It generates commitment and a feeling of accomplishment from the participants. People feel part of something bigger than their day-to-day challenges. Therefore, a well-facilitated, active meeting, that sets the stage for follow-up, will produce meeting results
MEETING COORDINATOR
The meeting coordinator sets a positive, productive tone for interaction among the meeting participants. The coordinator helps group members stay focused and productive. An effective coordinator, who keeps participants on track, ensures the accomplishment of expected, desired results from the meeting. The coordinator should involve each participant in action.
EFFECTIVE PLAN
• The name of the person who committed to “owning” the accomplishment of the SMART Goal,
• The due date of the SMART Goal,
• An agreement about what constitutes completion of the SMART Goal.
ACTIONS AFTER MEETING
• Actions and planning before and during the meeting play a big role in helping you achieve expected, positive, and constructive outcomes.
• Your actions following the meeting are just as crucial. Follow-up at the next scheduled meeting is never enough of an investment to ensure results
RECORD MEETING MINUTES
• Begin by Recording your minutes and action plan within 24 hours. People will most effectively contribute to results if they get started on action items right away.
• They still have a fresh memory of the meeting, the discussion and the rationale for the chosen direction. They remain enthusiastic and ready to get started.
• A delay in the distribution of minutes will hurt your results since most people wait for the minutes to arrive before they begin to tackle their commitments
• Make a habit of follow-up –meeting.
• Follow-up by the coordinator mid-way between meetings helps, Report on progress and outcomes at the next meeting and expect that all will have been accomplished.
• Alternatively, check progress at the next meeting and if there is a real roadblock to progress, determine how to proceed
Similarly the fast and effective change Management can be documented.
The Five WHY Techniques
“If You Do not asks the right question, you will not get the right answer”.
When a problem appears, the temptation to blame others or external events is strong, yet the root cause of problems often lies closer to home
3 Key Elements for effective use of 5 whys technique
- Accurate And Complete statements of problems.
- Complete honesty in answering the questions.
- The determination to get to the bottom of problems and resolve them.
PROCESS
• Gather a team and develop the problem statement in agreement. After this is done, decide whether or not additional individuals are needed to resolve the problem
• Ask the first “why” of the team: why is this or that problem taking place? There will probably be three or four sensible answer. Record them all on a flip chart or whiteboard, or use index cards taped to a wall.
• Ask four more successive “whys” repeating the process for every statement on the flip chart, whiteboard, or index cards. Post each answer near its “parent” follow up on all plausible answer. You will have identified the root cause when asking “why” yields no further useful information. (If necessary continue to ask questions beyond the arbitrary five layers to get to the root cause.)
• Among the dozen or so answers to the last asked “why” look for systemic causes of the problem. Discuss these and settle on the most likely systemic cause. Follow the team session with a debriefing and show the product to others to confirm that they see logic in the analysis.
• After settling on the most probable root cause of the problem and obtaining confirmation of the logic behind the analysis, develop appropriate corrective actions to remove the root cause from the system. The actions can (as the case demands) be undertaken by others but planning and implementation will benefit from team inputs.
Output Accomplishment & the design & Monitoring and Evaluation Framework
• Logic models help to analyze problems.
• Identify desired outcomes.
• Establish a logical hierarchy of means by which the desired outcomes will be reached.
• Identify clusters of outputs.
• Determine how accomplishments might be monitored and evaluated, and planned and actual results compared.
• Flag the assumptions on which a project is based and the associated risks.
• Summarize a project in a standard format.
• Build consensus with stakeholders.
• Create ownership of the project.
| Design Summary | Performance Targets and Indicators | Data Sources and Reporting Mechanisms | Assumptions and Risks |
| Impact: The broader impact of the project at a sectoral and national level | Measures of the extent to which the project has contributed to the impact | Sources of information and ways to gather and report it | Assumptions and risks at the impact level are beyond the control of the project but essential to attainment of the impact |
| Outcome: The expected outcome at the end of the project | Conditions at the end of the project indicating that its outcome has been achieved | Sources of information and ways to gather and report it | Assumptions and risks at the outcome level are those that relate to attainment of outcome targets |
| Outputs: The direct results of the project (works, goods, and services) | Measures of the quantity and quality of outputs and the timing of their delivery | Sources of information and ways to gather and report it | Assumptions and risks at the output level are those that are external and beyond the control of the project implementers but essential for successful attainment of the outputs |
| Activities with Milestones: The tasks executed to deliver the outputs identified | Inputs: The various resource categories required to undertake the project should be identified | ||
• They also support creative analysis. It is a rare project that unfolds exactly according to plan. During project implementation, one must pay close attention to the cause-and-effect relationships between inputs, activities with milestones, outputs, outcome, and impact. Repeatedly, one must make certain that inputs for activities are deployed successfully. Or one must adjust the means of attaining the outcome, including the definition of outputs, the mix of activities, and the indicators needed to measure accomplishment of the newly defined performance targets. Administration can become complex and it helps to have structure. Because of this, it is useful to deepen and extend typical logic models, for example, using the tool. For each output, one can examine methodically whether targets are being achieved, how the activities are being implemented, and how activities might be improved. One can then itemize individual action plans, which should be monitored constantly
Appreciative Inquiry and Working in Team
• Appreciative Inquiry is an Organizational development method. It is about the co-evolutionary search for the best in people, their organizations, and the relevant world around them.
• Appreciative Inquiry involves, in a central way, the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential.
Appreciative Inquiry utilizes a cycle of 4 ‘Ds’ processes focusing on
• DISCOVER: The identification of organizational processes that work well.
• DREAM: The envisioning of processes that would work well in the future.
• DESIGN: Planning and prioritizing processes that would work well.
• DESTINY (or DELIVER): The implementation (execution) of the proposed design
Elements of fantastic teamwork
• Clear, regular communication and feedback.
• Clear boundaries.
• Welfare and growth.
• Commitment.
• Direction – leadership-goals.
• Motivation – praise- reward.
• One more was added as a result of Joy’s feedback on the way people worked in the team – valuing diversity.
Exploring diversity within teams
• Visualizer - looking forward to the future, coming up with ideas.
• Finisher - dots the ‘I’s and crosses the ‘T’s. Focusing on detail and finishing.
• Active Problem Solver - action is the key word. Prefers to make a decision and move forward, taking responsibility for what happens as a result.
• Humanizer - people are key to every decision, how will changes/ decisions affect people.
Drawing Mind Maps
Thinking as a Skill
Mind Mapping is an important technique that improves the way you record information, and supports and enhances your creative problem solving. By using Mind Maps, you can quickly identify and understand the structure of a subject. You can see the way that pieces of information fit together, as well as recording the raw facts contained in normal notes. More than this, Mind Maps encourage creative problem solving, as they hold information in a format that your mind finds easy to remember and quick to review.
• A mind map is a circular, nonlinear way of organizing information.
• It shows the connections between a central topic and the relative importance of the concepts, themes, or tasks that one relates to it.
• It can be applied by individuals and groups to generate, visualize, structure, and classify these whenever clearer thinking and improved learning will enhance performance and effectiveness.
• The process of drawing a mind map is more interesting and entertaining than writing a report, or drafting a standard chart or table.
• The visual quality of mind maps allows users to identify, clarify, classify, summarize, consolidate, highlight, and present the structural elements of a subject more simply than with a standard set of notes. (It also assists review.)
• Mind maps facilitate recall because the clear association and linking of ideas mirrors the way the brain works—keywords and images are remembered with lesser effort than linear notes.
• Mind maps are compact, with no unnecessary words; easy to draw; very flexible; and can summarize pages of information.
• Mind maps help identify gaps in information and shine clarity on important issues.
Process
(i) Start at the center of the page (rather than from the top-left corner).
(ii) Adopt an open, creative attitude.
(iii) Associate and link keywords and images freely.
(iv) Think fast.
(v) Break black-and-white boundaries with different colors and styles.
(vi) Do not judge.
(vii) Keep moving.
(viii)Allow gradual organization by adding relationships and connections.
Improving Sector and Thematic Reporting
This session highlighted how to improve a particular sector and the thematic reporting.
Wearing 6 Thinking Hats
Six Hats, Six Colors
The Six Thinking Hats technique involves the use of metaphorical hats in discussions.
Participants put on hats in turn, possibly more than once but not necessarily all of them, to indicate directions (not descriptions) of thinking. The color of each is related to a function:
White hat thinking—neutral, objective—focuses on the data and information that are available or needed.
Red hat thinking—emotional—looks at a topic from the point of view of emotions, feelings, and hunches, without having to qualify or justify them.
Black hat thinking—somber, serious—uses experience, logic, judgment, and caution
to examine the difficulties and problems associated with a topic and the feasibility of
ideas.
Yellow hat thinking—sunny, positive—is concerned with benefits and values
Green hat thinking—growth, fertility—intimates creative thinking and movement, not judgment, to generate new ideas and solutions.
Blue hat thinking—cool, the sky above—concentrates on reflection, Meta cognition (thinking about the thinking required), and the need to manage the thinking process
Applications
Pertinent applications for the Six Thinking Hats technique include team productivity and communication; product and process improvement, as well as project management; critical and analytical thinking, problem solving, and decision making; and creativity training, meeting facilitation, and meeting management
Conducting after Action Review
The FAO literature on AAR was discussed in detail with its process, benefits and key points and practical tips.
Conducting Peer Assist
The FAO literature on Peer Assist was discussed in detail with its process, benefits and key points and practical tips.
Indentifying and sharing good practices using Storytelling Method
The group had a detailed discussion on the identifying good practices and to present the same we came to a common conclusion with following format
Title of the Story
Name of the Storyteller
Name of the Listener
Landscape: set the scene of in time and space
Dwelling place: precise location where action occurred
Characters: cast list, descriptive attributes and roles in the story
Challenge: Problem or task that triggered the action
Action: sequence of events before, during and after your turning point
Turning points
Resolution
Key visual hooks
And key points and practical tips were discussed on indentifying and sharing good practices through storytelling method.
