Reda Sadki

Soon, my pretties... The Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights, Disney Hollywood Studios (Hector Parayuelos/flickr.com)

Life-work balance

Reda Sadki April 15, 2015Learning strategy

Our connections include not only social life with colleagues, but also our personal lives with our partners, families and friends. Parental responsibilities, traffic jams in long commutes, or other challenges we face in our personal lives impact our level of energy and motivation for learning and innovation.

We call for leadership that recognizes the need for better balance between work and family. The wellness of our families has a positive halo effect on our motivation to do more than what is needed simply to hold down our jobs.

Base of silo (Astrid Westvang/flickr.com)

Learning is in the network

Reda Sadki April 14, 2015Learning strategy

“I knew them very well. That’s why it worked. Because we do work together.”

We take responsibility for our own learning, yet keenly aware of the value for learning of engaging with others. It is when we find ourselves alone or isolated that we may best perceive the value of connecting with others for learning.

One of the justifications for working in a silo is a very high level of specialization that requires being fully-focused on one’s own area of work – to the exclusion of others.

We form networks of informal learning and collaboration in our team, with other departments in the headquarters, with the field, and with people and organizations outside the organization.

Asking people is often faster than sifting through information.

Technology facilitates building and sustaining small networks of trusted colleagues, large formal working groups, and more anonymous forms (mailing lists, discussion forums, etc.) that keep us connected.

In our volatile working environment, what we know (usually thought of as content-based knowledge) is replaced with how we are connected to others. That is how we stay current and informed.

Networks are a powerful problem-solving resource that people naturally turn to when they need help. We rely on small, trusted networks to accelerate problem-solving (learning).

Photo: Door at base of silo (Astrid Westvang/flickr.com)

Christakis, N.A., Fowler, J.H., 2009. Connected: The surprising power of our social networks and how they shape our lives. Little, Brown.

Connecting to the environment

Reda Sadki April 13, 2015Learning strategy

“[…] you learn that you are not alone in dealing with a technical problem and sometimes you just need a second technical opinion. Sometimes, it does help if you listen to people who see it from a totally different perspective. To give you an example: [suppliers] are the providers of equipment and we are the demand side. There sometimes are good discussions to come to a common solution, which you don’t get if you sit at your desk […]. This sharing of technical knowledge as well as brainstorming around the technical problem with different stakeholders who see the problem from different sides, I find that really refreshing or rewarding. But that again, this is not formal training or whatever.”

Photo: Christakis, N.A., Fowler, J.H., 2009. Connected: The surprising power of our social networks and how they shape our lives. Little, Brown.

Silent silos (Indigo Skies Photography/flickr.com)

Against insularity

Reda Sadki April 13, 2015Learning strategy

“We came to understand because we have very good global connections.”

How do we connect with other people, with other member organizations in the network, and with those external to it? How do we form and leverage networks? Where is learning in these networks? Beyond utilitarian purposes, how do connections with our colleagues and their organizations enrich our experience?

We cannot afford to remain insular and inward-looking.

Some of us may still feel that itis “more relevant” to “look into what we have internally already instead of looking too much externally”. Increasingly, though, we question the insular and inward-looking aspects of our learning culture.

We cannot afford to remain ignorant of or uninterested in experiences outside of our membership, not when we recognize the need for change. We see that members are now more open to working with external partners and it is our responsibility to embrace and support this.

What are the benefits of learning outside the silo?

We learn from people working in other areas of work, other organizations, or other industries. We access information sources that may or may not be directly related to our work to expand our horizons, stimulate our creativity, or to “see what are the current problems and just try to understand which things have are outside the field of vision of our area of work”.

Although we spend most of our time trying to improve our knowledge performance to drive results, too reductive a focus on utility may stifle our creativity. In some cases, we enjoy learning about issues with no direct relation to our specialization.

“We are all something,” says Blaise Pascal, “but none of us are everything”.

Photo: Silent silos (Indigo Skies Photography/flickr.com)

6509s. A work in progress (Bob Mical/flickr.com)

What is a connector?

Reda Sadki April 10, 2015Learning strategy

Where some believe that the value of their network is based on its exclusivity, connectors are people in the organization who have developed large networks of people and who see their role in introducing people in their network to each other.

This connector role is closely related to the knowledge brokering process that recombines existing knowledge and facilitates knowledge transfer.

The relationships leveraged by connectors may be personal or based on prior experience rather than ascribed to the current role, especially in the context of decentralization.

Building a dense network of relationships is a prerequisite for the connector function. As connectors, we are empowered toward the collection vision in which can act as knowledge brokers to foster, replicate, scale, and harmonize innovation by National Societies.

Photo: 6509s. A work in progress (Bob Mical/flickr.com)

What does it mean to broker knowledge in a network?

Reda Sadki April 9, 2015Learning strategy

Our network function requires that we interact with the network. We observe profound changes in the nature of knowledge, how it circulates, and this affects how we work (learn).

Members in the network, too, have changed. We struggle to keep up with and adapt to these changes. In working with them, we prioritize results against their own expectations as well as those of donors and governments.

Hence, it is difficult to justify learning approaches that take us away from such priorities. We wish for time after delivery to reflect on lessons learned, but such wishes may be swept away by the next urgent task.

The alternative to this frustrating cycle of task delivery at the expense of reflection is to adopt a knowledge brokering approach. We broker knowledge when we link learning with innovation in the context of the long history of work done by the network.

When trying to solve a difficult problem, especially in emergencies, our “fear of failure” drives speed and urgency in finding innovative solutions. We trade off certainty for speed. By contrast, in most of our work, “fear of failure” inhibits speed and risk-taking, as we seek to execute what has been previously established as normative. Therefore, innovation processes require different indicators and metrics than those of execution.

Knowledge brokering provides a model for how we might be able to embed innovation and learning into work, by recombining our past and current knowledge, leveraging the old to do new things in new ways.

The historical model is for the center (headquarters) to produce “trickle-down” knowledge to be consumed by the periphery (network), with feedback as an occasional and exceptional event. For example, even though we know the importance of currency, we wait years before we consider updating guidelines, because making knowledge current requires stopping other work and concerted effort that is difficult to organize and resource.

This traditional model in which members of the network request assistance from headquarters becomes increasingly difficult to sustain when there is more knowledge and everything is faster, calling into question traditional models of expertise.

When we look for commonalities between network members, we question our assumptions about how different they are. In our new role as knowledge brokers, by working with many in the network, we facilitate access to the ideas, artifacts, and people that reside within one member or domain yet may be valuable in others. From this existing knowledge (which also considers existing trainings, guidelines, and tools), we strive to discover new combinations and new ways to transfer experience. When nodes in the network are thus empowered to “do for themselves”, the nature of our expertise changes and we change too.

If members do for themselves, what then is the role for those of us who work in headquarters?

Reference: Hargadon, A.B., 2002. Brokering knowledge: Linking learning and innovation. Research in Organizational behavior 24, 41–85.

Photo: Wire (Kendra/flickr.com)

Danger of death (Lars Plougmann/flickr.com)

How do we learn from the network?

Reda Sadki April 9, 2015Learning strategy

When our organization’s hierarchy prohibits direct contact with the field, indirect and informal contact becomes more important than ever. Global and regional meetings, bilateral programmes, and various kinds of informal events provide opportunities for staying in touch. In fact, decentralization raises the stakes of informal and incidental learning – activities “flying under the radar” of decentralization’s hierarchical relationships may become the primary mode for learning about, with and for the field.

How do we overcome barriers to learning from the network? First, when we reframe new ideas and possibilities, we ask how this aligns with the current characteristics of the nodes in the network (“the membership”). Second, we need to leverage continual learning to innovate, recombining and inventing new solutions (knowledge brokering). Third, we need to consider indicators other than the volume of programming, and consider how we can scale up quality.

Photo: Danger of death (Lars Plougmann/flickr.com)

Vintage Bank Vault (Brook Ward/flickr.com)

Death of the knowledge bank

Reda Sadki April 7, 2015Learning strategy

The complexity of the networks in which our organization operates is scaffolded by a corpus of mostly-unwritten, tacit knowledge and ‘ways of working’ that we learn mostly from our peers. It would be impossible to justify time to study even a fraction of the written corpus of policies, procedures, regulations and other instruments of bureaucracy that provides the legal and operational framework – and even that would not provide access to the tacit knowledge that we need. So we learn as we go from our colleagues. In some contexts, we may proceed by trial and error, making adjustments when we receive negative feedback.

When asked where we learn such knowledge, sources may remain apocryphal. We seldom reflect on where, when, how, and from whom we learn.

Relegating learning about operational complexity to the informal domain may seem to present a risk for the organization. In practice, we find that we do tend to learn what we need, when we need it as we work. It would be costly and time-consuming (i.e., impossible, as stated above) to achieve the same ends through formal training. Instead, the organization stands to benefit from recognition of the value of what is learned informally and learn to trust its validity.

The organization’s mission and mandate – as well as its ability to deliver on these – is the subject of much internal discussion in both the central organization (“headquarters”) and the network.

What do we do if a formal review finds limited change management capability in-house to keep pace with the rapid change in the external environment? We know that this is a critical gap because of the increased competition in the humanitarian and development world between the traditional service providers and new providers who are looking to enhance value-for-money offerings. Worse, other significant gaps may be found in our ability to drive strategically-guided programs on the ground, leading to diluted service delivery.

Such diagnosis leads to a refocus on knowledge production, circulation or exchange, but often misses the point that learning is what brings knowledge to life. The knowledge bank model is bankrupt: accumulation (or transport) of knowledge is a costly dead end, because the nature of knowledge itself has changed. It flows and becomes obsolete faster than ever. It is process, not product. Quality is in the ‘pipes’ that connect networked knowledge. Learning is in the network. That is why it is necessary but insufficient to retool in order to move knowledge throughout the world.

Why do organizations confronted with the same problem so consistently fail to consider that learning is knowledge-as-process? The blog posts in this series on learning strategy have consistently highlighted both the centrality of informal and incidental learning and its lack of recognition and near-invisibility to the organization. The more highly developed the ‘pipes’ of informal and incidental learning – or the more politically volatile the environment–, the less likely it becomes that the value of what is learned outside of formal contexts will be visible or acknowledged. And what cannot be seen is, of course, unlikely to be taken into consideration in times of change or reform.

Photo: Vintage Bank Vault (Brook Ward/flickr.com)

Crop Circle - Waylands Smithy (Ian Burt/flickr.com)

Decentralization done wrong

Reda Sadki April 7, 2015Learning strategy

Leave the global functions to headquarters, and shift responsibility for the field to those who are actually there (or close by). It sounds perfectly sensible. And, in fact, it is an approach to decentralization adopted by some organizations. What are its implications for learning strategy?

At the most obvious level, decentralization for those of us who work at the global – and, to a lesser extent, regional – level has reduced direct contact with the network. We often experience this as a constraint, limiting our ability to stay current with what is happening in the network to ensure that our work is closely aligned to the mission.

We duly note that privileged relationships with donors have been preserved at the global level, despite decentralization.

We observe mostly negative consequences of decentralization, even though in principle it should be the best support to take into account differences from one geographic region to another. In the organization’s culture of consensus and the political context for decentralization, such frustration may not be expressed publicly. Yet, decentralization is increasingly perceived as an important barrier to working with the network, much less working as a network. This is because responsibilities shifted but hierarchies remained to erect new walls that obscure knowledge and limit its flow.

How do we compensate when the ‘pipes’ of knowledge networks dry up or are dismantled? In working with those in the field, we leverage the fact that we are likely to be peers, often having ourselves “been there”. We rely on prior knowledge that we may have acquired through experience. However, we are keenly aware that what we know may be out of date. After all, how long can we be in a global position while being out of touch from the field?

Photo: Crop Circle – Waylands Smithy (Ian Burt/flickr.com)