Conducting a Knowledge and Learning Needs Assessment

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Before embarking on the ambitious and rather vague mission of improving knowledge sharing and learning, an organization or program needs first to assess what it is already marc manoff doing in this regard and what its needs are. Designing and performing a KS&L needs assessment will enable staff:

• to gain a better understanding of knowledge management and to identify the benefits of learning to their program or organization;
• to assess the current state of learning, including obstacles and opportunities; and
• to lay the groundwork for designing a programmatic or organizational KS&L strategy.

Involving staff (including senior management) and other stakeholders (board, partner organizations, program participants or clients) in a needs assessment is important for all to gain a better understanding of KS&L and to get everyone’s buy-in as well. When everyone knows what’s at stake and fully understands both the rewards and challenges, people will be better prepared and more eager to actively participate in an endeavor that requires everyone’s commitment to be ultimately successful. Moreover, self-knowledge — understanding how you learn — is an essential first step in improving your own learning processes.^[1] Having an open assessment creates not only the opportunity for stakeholder buy-in and commitment but also stimulates open dialogue and exploration about knowledge sharing and facilitates this self-learning.

Assessing an organization’s current KS&L assets and activities involves two tasks. The first is to identify where knowledge resides, and involves locating repositories of knowledge throughout the organization. The second, more intensive knowledge mapping task attempts to capture the patterns of knowledge flow in the organization.^[2] A needs assessment, key unmet needs and capability gaps are identified –for example with respect to staff (i.e., skills, incentives, and time), program design, and technology–, as well as key barriers to addressing the identified needs. A need assessment will also begin to answer some of the following questions: What learning have we accomplished in the past? What changes do we need to make in behavior and performance to become better KS&L practitioners? What are possible solutions given the assessment findings? What are the expected costs and benefits of any projected solutions?

Designing a KS&L strategy for a program calls for a slightly different approach to needs assessment than designing a strategy for the entire organization. Within a program, senior staff already has insider knowledge of the topic and of staff learning styles that makes needs assessment less dependent on standardized procedures and tools for its success. On the other hand, an organization-wide KS&L needs assessment tends to rely more on standardization of procedures and tools, given that it has to be comprehensible across different units or departments (and hence across different paradigms, jargons, and approaches). On the other hand, program staff might lose sight of the bigger picture of the organization's KS&L strategy (if there is one in place) because they are more involved in the daily implementation of the projects, the ‘to-do’ mode. The agency-wide assessment therefore often provides a clearer picture of organizational KS&L, but can lack the fine-grain details of the programs' reality—perpetuating a learning gap. Organizational and programmatic needs assessments are not mutually exclusive and can complement one another well if conducted in a coordinated fashion. Refer to the KS&L Tools section in appendix C for examples of the various tools used by the BELO participants.

See appendix B, Organizational Vignettes: How to conduct a knowledge management and learning needs assessment?

Assessments in Review

CARE

CARE’s knowledge needs assessment was based on a knowledge sharing framework that was developed by Accenture Development Partners (ADP)^[3]. The framework (see in appendix C, CARE’s KS Framework) consists of nine components: strategy, governance, monitoring and evaluation, culture and behaviors, policy and incentives, technology and tools, content, communications, and process. The ADP team first performed a gap analysis by asking a structured set of questions within each component of the KS framework to approximately sixty key VS&L practitioners and stakeholders in six participating country offices. In this, they were able to identify key successes and strengths, unmet needs and capability gaps, as well as existing barriers.

After the nine-week assessment phase the, ADP team consolidated and analyzed the results and presented these at a two-day regional workshop in Johannesburg. In addition to representation from the six countries that were soon-to-be piloting KS&L for BELO, CARE representatives and VS&L^[4] practitioners attended from Burundi, Niger, Rwanda, and Uganda. The purpose of the workshop was to synthesize knowledge sharing practices, VS&L themes for collaboration, and specific content for the pilot phase. Participants discussed the assessment findings and worked in teams to prioritize the specific knowledge sharing practices that would further VS&L programming goals.

The next step was to identify specific problem areas and opportunities within the VS&L program. From the assessment CARE’s VS&L program staff learned that the greatest opportunity for change resided in the lowest-scoring KS framework components: monitoring and evaluation, governance, technology and process. It was decided to focus the BELO project on these to bring significant improvements in VS&L knowledge sharing and learning practices and processes.

In a next step the staff identified—in a participatory fashion—possible solutions and growth opportunities to serve as the basis for a subsequent KS&L strategy. For example, a Community of Practice was set up governed by a set of rules and responsibilities to which each practitioner agreed to adhere. Therefore a governance structure was set up to solidify KS&L efforts, strengthening two of the identified weaker components—governance and process.

Freedom from Hunger

Freedom from Hunger conducted a comprehensive knowledge audit at a moment when the organization was experiencing tremendous growth that had begun to impede the organization’s knowledge flow. The knowledge audit used various data sources (staff survey, inventory of knowledge assets, system review, technology review, portal use statistics, interviewing and job shadowing) to build a complete picture of information and knowledge flow within the organization. The Knowledge Manager designed a "knowledge pyramid" (Fig. 1) to portray her findings. In this pyramid the most explicit and tangible knowledge assets are positioned above more intangible, tacit ones. Each layer is influenced by the layers below: documents are written by people, who are part of a process, which is embedded in an organizational context with a certain type of culture and language. In addition to the knowledge audit, a knowledge workshop (see in appendix C, FFH’s Knowledge Workshop) was held with staff to teach them more about knowledge management so that they could collectively identify more thoroughly their own KS&L priorities. Interestingly, both the knowledge audit and workshop developed a nearly identical list of KS&L priorities.

Figure 1

Practical Action

Practical Action did not conduct a comprehensive knowledge audit of its Markets and Livelihoods Program (MLP), but undertook a less structured approach in a programmatic context, in which senior program staff already knew the needs of their own team members and processes relatively well. MLP first constructed a Learning Map, which maps key learning processes (routines, stakeholders and logistics involved with learning), but fails to address the broader level of the learning strategy and principles.

It also created a Learning Routines Matrix, which proposes frequencies (daily, monthly, yearly, occasional, etc) in the vertical axis and key features of such routines in the horizontal axis (description, audience (internal/external), type of reports produced, and degree of perceived importance). The matrix also promoted useful analysis of key learning moments. The degree of ‘perceived importance’, using a star rating-system, was particularly useful, especially as it highlighted learning routines that were perceived in different ways by various country teams (i.e. the same routine was more important for some teams than for others). Understanding the cause of these differences in perception can produce useful insights to improve the routines or how they are communicated to the staff. Both of these tools are useful for promoting focused and systematic conversations with the teams about key learning routines and processes and revealing redundant reporting routines that can be streamlined or fine-tuned.

Figure 2: Learning Map

WOCCU

The Knowledge Management Coordinator at WOCCU initiated a knowledge management audit, with the goals being twofold: first, to determine and ascertain individual understanding of what a “learning organization” is and what KM brings to WOCCU; and second, to determine what is already in place at WOCCU in order to increase capacity to share knowledge throughout the organization. The summary of the KM staff audit was presented to senior management in advance of a senior manager meeting, and generated interest in focusing KM on specific areas/topics for WOCCU’s best practices and lessons learned documentation. Additionally, the meeting identified the need for a required reading list for all staff to ensure they shared the same basis for understanding WOCCU’s work.

Lessons Learned

Please do not make edits to the lessons given as these belong to the organizations that participated in this study. All comments and observations on the lessons, however, are highly encouraged, as are any additions.

Lesson #1 Participatory assessments, versus formal audits, create environments for dialogue, buy-in and awareness-raising.

Both Freedom from Hunger and CARE found that a knowledge workshop was a quicker and more effective means of assessment than conducting a formal knowledge audit. People are very capable of identifying what works and what needs improvement. It was found that by doing a more participatory assessment people better understood what knowledge management was and why it was important. They were also better able to see how individuals and teams are part of a larger system and how changes in one place can “break” things in another. Moreover, a participatory knowledge workshop builds buy-in and recognition of the need for improved KS&L from the beginning. With an assessment being conducted before energy is invested in building an effective learning organization, everybody understands what is at stake, what the problems are and what types of rewards can be achieved. This helps achieve buy-in and participation at all levels.

Lesson #2 Stakeholders at multiple and varied levels should be engaged.

CARE found that all levels of the organization should be actively involved in the needs assessment (and in the subsequent strategy development as well): not only practitioners but also the Country Office staff not excluding the Country Director. This enabled multiple levels of data to be collected for analysis of the framework for each country office, and it ensured multiple stakeholders about the need to set a KS&L strategy.

Lesson #3 Assessments should be structured and managed such that they are themselves an opportunity to both begin learning and motivate commitment to learning

The needs assessment is the place to start building momentum for learning. Often stakeholders participating in the assessment become champions to build momentum during the implementation phase. CARE found overwhelming evidence that knowledge sharing and learning were very much desired within the organization and people just want to have the space for it. By conducting a series of individual meetings with senior managers via the KM audit, there was a broad based approach to sensitizing senior level decision makers as to the idea of knowledge management.

Lesson #4 Assessments can highlight those areas within the easiest reach and with the greatest returns, allowing management to ensure a quick return on organizational KM ‘investment’.

The needs assessment and framework findings allowed CARE’s Economic Development programming to focus initial energies on the areas with the greatest opportunity for change. Although the culture and behavior component was not found to be an area for the greatest opportunity for change, it is important not to underestimate the investment needed to strengthen perceptions of knowledge sharing culture and behavior.

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Notes

1. ↑ Smit, Maaike, (2006), We’re Too Much in ‘To Do’ Mode: Action Research into Supporting International NGOs to Learn, Praxis Paper No. 16, INTRAC.
2. ↑ Richardson, Don (2001). The Practical Reality of Knowledge Management within Development Initiatives, Telecommons Development Group.
3. ↑ ADP is a not-for-profit unit within Accenture, the global management consultancy, and provides field-based business and technology consultancy services to CARE and other international development organizations.
4. ↑ Village Savings and Loan (VS&L), CARE’s community managed microfinance model.

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