Kmc4CRP3

KMC4CRP3: Designing KM and Comms for the new CRPs 24-28 May 2015 ILRI Info Centre, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Read the KMC4CRP3 and share fair agendas

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Why this workshop?

This third KMC4CRP workshop is happening because:

• Great attendance, enthusiasm, following and expectations from the participants of the two previous editions;
• The design of the second wave of CRPs, which gives us opportunities to think about the good work we have done in the past years and how we can influence that second phase design with a more unified voice/approach;
• The presence of some expert facilitators at the eLearning Africa and AgKnowledge Innovation share fair that creates great opportunities to showcase a lot of work and get our staff trained on some very important 'process' areas of comms and KM

The overall structure is:

• On 24 May, comms people from the CCAFS and WLE CRPs hold review and planing discussions. Some people will also use this to preparer the sharefair.
• On 25 and 26 May the 'AgKnowledge Innovation Process Share Fair' combines a focus on knowledge and innovation process design and facilitation with exchanges and learning on KM and comms in CRPs. This group comprises CGIAR as well as other people
• On the morning of 27 May, we continue with some dedicated focused CRP learning and exchanges
• From 27 (afternoon) to 28 May (afternoon), a KMC4CRP writeshop brings together a very small group to produce some very specific products to capitalise on and and influence the design of phase 2 CRPs.

Workshop objectives, expected outputs and general idea about the three strands

AgKnowledge Innovation Share Fair - Monday and Tuesday

CGIAR and other organizations working in agriculture and rural development are transforming the ways they do business. The transformations call for much stronger capabilities to design and deliver truly effective ‘process’ improvements that lead to applied innovation, social learning and value for money. Today’s business ‘un-usual’ has to be the tomorrow’s new ‘as-usual’. These process improvements are needed at different levels, from individuals to systems. Some of the important drivers for this transformation include:

• Today’s agricultural challenges, and the solutions proposed, are complex and require collective, ‘social’ actions that grow out of facilitated processes of joint problem identification, innovation, and prioritization...
• The dream, or ambition, of outcomes and impacts ‘at scale’ requires sustained engagement and joint actions of different actors, over time. Bringing diverse people together, and keeping them together, requires a mix of process ‘arts’ and ‘science’ to deliver the results...
• Collaboration across teams, disciplines and institutes is essential for success and must be properly set up, facilitated and nurtured...
• Beyond collaboration, partnerships for impact are more likely to succeed when the shared interests of partners are developed through facilitated processes leading to meetings of hearts, minds and expertise...
• Sustained locally-applied innovation and development results from the rich and real involvement of community actors in determining, prioritizing and testing research and development interventions in their situations...
• Participation, engagement and capacity development (and empowerment) emerge from processes designed with these as specific outcomes and with these as characteristics...
• With increased needs for face to face or virtual interaction and dialogue, good process design, facilitation and documentation ensures that the costs of such transactions are low compared to the value added (or gained)...
• Improved processes catalyze innovation, learning and results at different scales and levels. There are no magic bullets; there ARE, however, many good examples, approaches and methods that work...

In summary, we look for process improvements that help us:

• tackle tough issues through collective actions
• collaborate across teams
• forge and sustain partnerships for impact
• take interventions to scale
• engage effectively with local expertise
• empower different actors
• develop capacities for innovation (and learning)
• facilitate dialogue and conversations

Objectives The share fair is an opportunity to do all of these. Using these ideas as overall guiding threads, we use innovative design, process facilitation, and the active involvement of expert practitioners (and learners), to:

1. showcase, test and assess a set of the most promising ‘process improvements’ known to make agricultural research and development activities, programs, and institutes more effective.
2. energize and catalyze and capacitate a wider generation of ‘transformers’ able to take these approaches to scale across CGIAR and beyond.
3. help participants generate measurable progress on the challenges they encounter through wide engagement in localized problem solving

Expected outputs and outcomes

• Pre-documentation and process notes available about every methodology/approach undertaken
• All participants have had an opportunity to learn about more process-focused approaches
• Local participants have had their capacity developed to (better) undertake these approaches in their localized context
• All participants have played an active role and have extended and deepened their individual and collective learning

KMC4CRP Writeshop: CRP phase 2 focus with capitalisation and synthesis

(The overarching focus of this event is the phase 2 of CRPs, which will influence all our KMC work across centres and CRPs. This event would focus on embedding the right set of KMC in the phase 2 CRPs through joint stocktaking and prioritizing. Work on a set of common principles and recommended core building blocks that we can pull together for wider validation and use. Also work on some KMC prioritiy advocacy targets across CGIAR to ensure and extend support for these activities among important people. We will tackle this in two different sections of two days each).

This would include a much smaller group of people, spanning a variety of CRPs and centres, but selected on the basis of their involvement in KMC activities, large experience with it in CGIAR and ability to help influence the CRP phase 2 design process.

Objectives

• Finish synthesizing what we learned about KMC and CRPs in phase 1 (and this year so far).
• Identify a package of KMC-related principles, actions or interventions that we want to see included in the design of the next round of CRPs
• Identify a set of KMC-related advocacy targets and activities across CGIAR and associated groups - for CRP phase 2 and possibly other processes (e.g. GCARD3)

Expected outputs and outcomes

• Updated building blocks from KMC4CRPS1 meeting
• Updated KMC diagram from KMC4CRPS2 meeting
• Draft package of core/key/critical KMC interventions and actions for phase 2 CRP designers [something anyone could adapt and adjust]
• Draft KMC engagement/influencing plan for wider CGIAR