Collaboration often starts off from a place where a collection of relatively self-centred individuals decide to work together. The self-centredness is not a problem per se, it’s a fact. Though I was recently reminded in a Blink about ‘Ego is the enemy‘ that one can be unreasonably self-centred too but that’s a digression). In any […]
Category Archives: Learning
What really is the value of feedback?
Happy new year everyone! I hope 2019 brings you health and well-being, happiness, peace, fun, inspiration and success! I also hope it brings you and us all lots of opportunities to get better at feedback. Both giving and receiving it. When I developed my motto ‘fun, focus and feedback‘, I didn’t expect that this third […]
The ‘meta’ reflex, that little knowledge ‘extra’ that makes a difference
My head is still boggling about the relation that some people can have with time. Particularly about what they do with time, this fascinating uber-theme of humanity alongside with love, death and the meaning of life. I’ll be blogging a couple of posts about time. Starting today with this: the little extra time that smart workers […]
Knowledge management – a visual guided tour of ‘KM as a mindset’
Last week I was invited to help a group unravel the mysteries of knowledge management. It was a great opportunity to intervene both as facilitator and subject matter specialist. Triggered by the opportunity to connect with my main area of expertise I quickly realised I was hit by the ‘curse of knowledge’ ie. how could […]
What is KM? Really…
I pondered this a couple of days ago: when I have to explain to someone that I don’t know what I do (at least for the knowledge management part of my work), despite previous attempts I still struggle. Off the cuff this is what came up to me, when thinking about describing my KM work. […]
Linking knowledge management with monitoring and evaluation
A short while ago, I gave a small brown bag seminar on the connections between knowledge management (KM) on the one hand and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) on the other hand, for a group of people from the Centre for Development Innovation (CDI) and the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), both located in […]
Ban info-dumping and think carefully how much information you can handle
The paradox of the knowledge age is that we feel ever more lost with information and our capacity to filter it, and yet… We always want more, more and more of it. But as much as slow-food and eco-citizen trends are teaching us (again and again), the best can be the enemy of the good […]
Nothing new under the sun? Here’s what’s new: your dying thirst for learning
It’s a natural tendency of skeptics, experts, people who’ve been in a field for a while: they’ve seen it all, nothing is new, why bother? This is happening currently on KM4Dev in relation with a conversation on what is different about communities of practice now and then. Some people have the tendency to say that indeed […]
Moving on after nearly 6 years in Ethiopia, in 6 epitomising posts of the ‘habesha phase’
This Friday – 2 June 2017 – I will be leaving Ethiopia as a resident for good. I will still be working with ILRI but based in The Hague, the Netherlands. Personal matters have taken precedence over professional ones and we have to be back in Europe. It’s a pity in some way, but it’s […]
The (social) economics of gift and burying “knowledge is power” once and for all
“Giving a gift makes you indispensable. Inventing a gift, creating art-that is what the market seeks out, and the givers are the ones who earn our respect and attention.” (Seth Godin,). As I am continuing to listen to this excellent ‘Linchpin‘ book, at least one whole section of the book is worth exploring from an […]
