Community Organizing in KM Practice (Video)
Video produced by Steve Nathans-Kelly
At KMWorld 2019, UNICEF KM specialist Ivan Butina discussed key concepts of knowledge sharing in community organizing, and how they relate to knowledge management practices in general.
Is technology the only way we can innovate KM to make it more effective? While taking a Harvard course on community organizing, Butina considered how to improve the often-struggling people-side of KM. The issues were: How to motivate people to do something, how to build relationships that lead to a culture of commitment, how to win key stakeholders,a nd how to use scarce resources to obtain more of them and achieve strategic goals.
These are some of the key questions the community-organizing model answers, and they are the same ones KM professionals often face in their day-to-day jobs.
When Butina was at the World Bank, he said, roughly 80% of his time was spent on communities of practice. The goal was to make community-building a macro-area that includes everything, digital communities, community interest, communities of practice, community organizing, which are essentially "communities of action."
The concept of "communities of action" is important because it offers structure, he said. "I don't know if you have ever been a leader or a volunteer leader, but sometimes we take too much on ourselves, end up doing too much; you know, you're leading a group and you think, gosh I'm doing everything. This allows you to avoid that trap. You're the last one to take responsibility, you overview, but you make sure others take responsibility and it's not having others do tasks you tell them [to do]. They do the tasks they want and by the way they're empowered because they're the leaders of the task; if they need people, they lead."
To access the full session, go to A202. Community Organizing: Empowering Knowledge Managers.
Videos of KMWorld 2019 awards presentations, keynotes, and many sessions can be found here.
Many speakers at KMWorld 2019 have also made their presentations available at www.kmworld.com/Conference/2019/Presentations.aspx.
SAVE THE DATE FOR KMWORLD 2020: NOVEMBER 16-19, 2020!