Important

Ensure that key stakeholders are members; balance giving and taking.

Strive for most practical and tangible outputs/outcomes; disseminate them widely.

Carefully select how to “be connected” – balance and combine face to face meetings with other means.

Combine informality with a basic set of rules for communication and collaboration.

Ensure ownership within – cultivate and support the roles of manager, expert, facilitator.Adjust to changes in the environment.

Open Space

Open Space is a self-organizing practice that allows all kinds of people in any kind of organization to create inspired meetings and events. It is known to kindle enormous energies and to bring forth fast and well-documented results. Participants of an open space event create and manage their own agenda of parallel working sessions around a central theme of strategic importance. By inviting people to take responsibility for what they care about it releases the inherent creativity and leadership in people, establishes a marketplace of inquiry, reflection and learning bringing out the best in both individuals and the whole group. Open Space can be used to work with groups of 5 to 1000 people, for events of two hours to several days. It works best when work to be done is complex, the people and ideas involved are diverse, the passion for resolution (and potential for conflict) are high, and time is very limited.

How to go about an Open Space event

Select a focusing statement/question that frames the higher purpose and widest context for discussion in a positive way

Invite all stakeholders and/or who you feel should be part of it

Prepare the workplace with a free space and writing materials in the centre (noting down of ideas), a blank agenda wall (posting of issues and ideas for discussion or work) and a news wall (reporting back from sub-groups)

Explain theme and process of the event and invite people to write down what is of heart and meaning to them (form: topic, name, time and space for meeting)

Open the marketplace – “offers” are put on the agenda wall, let people sign up and have them work independently (incl. reporting back to news wall).

Make closing round to collect and share highlights.

Mail out report created (collection of reports of sub-groups) to all participants

Balanced Scorecard (BSC)

The balanced scorecard is a strategic planning and management system that enables an organization to put its strategy into action. BSC helps the organization to align all its activities to its vision and strategic goals, to improve its internal and external communication and to monitor organizational performance against these same strategic goals. The core piece of the system is a matrix, the so-called balanced scorecard. This matrix depicts the strategic goals that are split into objectives for four dimensions of an organization. It also includes the concrete activities necessary to fulfill the objectives, the expected results of the same as well as the related assigned responsibilities. What is special about the BSC is that it looks at the organization not only from a financial perspective, but also includes other perspectives such as personnel, learning and growth, business processes and customer satisfaction. It therefore yields an integrated, balanced picture of an organization and makes it easy to observe/steer organizational performance.

How to go about a Balanced Scorecard

Formulate mission, vision and strategic goal of the organization

Develop the balanced scorecard matrix

Brake down the strategic goal into objectives and concrete activities within the relevant dimensions (e.g. customer view, internal business processes, learning, growth and innovation, finances).

Come up with and select strategic initiatives/activities (goal, action, indicator)

Club initiatives into strategic projects.

Implement strategic projects (clear assignment of responsibilities!).

Communicate the planned activities and results by means of a reporting scorecard.

Organize the learning process – reflection, adaption and new projects.

Knowledge Map

A knowledge map is a tool for presenting what knowledge resides where (e.g. people, media, organizational units or sources of knowledge outside the organisation) and for demonstrating the patterns of knowledge flow (access, distribution, learning). Knowledge mapping is the first step in creating an inventory of knowledge (i.e. the knowledge base) and developing/improving the processes of knowledge sharing. Its principal purpose and clearest benefit is to show people in an organization or within a network/supply chain very fast where to go when they need expertise. It also helps to understand what knowledge is essential or at risk to be lost and thus needs to be reused or “secured”. Based on knowledge maps organizations can go about developing new models for improving knowledge sharing and knowledge flow and the fulfillment of their mission and goals. Knowledge maps can also help in organizing research activities and analyzing the related flow and impact of knowledge. The most common way of presenting a knowledge map is a simple graph with typically 60- 100 nodes representing knowledge repositories/sources and connections representing the flow of knowledge (in a physical or mental sense).

How to go about a Knowledge Map

In a series of interviews ask people to provide information about the (structure of) knowledge in the concerned domain (what is linked to each other, how)

Let them rate the importance for the company, the difficulty to replace it, whether it is acquired mainly from study or practice and the proportion of staff in the knowledge area who would also know about it.

Plot the results on a knowledge map.

Analyze the knowledge map and integrate the results in a knowledge management strategy, keeping in mind that a knowledge map is a momentary snapshot and might change.

Knowledge Network

A Knowledge Network consists of a group of people who provide each other with and share implicit and explicit knowledge and skills and develop them further. This happens through a variety of channels and different kinds of contacts: specific one to one interactions via Email, Phone and Skype or in conferences and other events, or unspecific interactions amongst a larger group through forum discussions, documents, profiles and ratings that are put on the net, or through information carriers such as e.g. newsletters. Despite of this multitude and variety any knowledge network first and foremost functions based on personal contacts, private and professional ones that accumulate over the years and are carefully fostered and kept alive. A necessary precondition is a common (area of) interest of the stakeholders. This area of interest is often delineated in rather general terms (mountain agriculture) because a Knowledge Network it is not only about exchange amongst colleagues but also about getting access to a maximum spectrum of knowledge(bearers) and skills for all eventualities. The benefit of a network increases more than proportionally with the number of persons involved in it.