KNOWvember - Models of KM and organisational fit
Nick Smith, Knowledge & Learning Manager at the NationalLottery Community Fund (NLCF) kindly provided this webinar presentation, having been awarded a GIG Annual Award in 2020. NLCF is a non-departmental public body and was established in 2017. It is the biggest community funder in the UK, awarding over £0.5 Billion grants to a wide range of community organisations, large and small, covering a broad range of topics and services. The Knowledge and Learning Team that Nick heads up, has been developing the NLCF KM model over time, and it was the process of submitting the GIG Award nomination which provided the opportunity for reflection, resulting in the fully formed model – The Triple A Model of KM: Access, Agency and Added-value.
Access – capturing knowledge and making it easily
accessible to all
Access recognised that there was a huge internal knowledge about NLCF
about funding operations, but that this was hidden in shared drives, personal drives, the intranet, websites, in peoples’ heads and was leaving the
organisation with each staff member’s departure. An infrastructure was required to capture
this knowledge, so that it could be easy to access and available to all. The
resultant “Knowledge Bank” provided on SharePoint, serves this purpose and
includes: a document library, thematic topic pages, programme pages capturing
the historic knowledge of former grant programmes, and an internal skills
finder. The Knowledge Bank continues to evolve, for instance, with the addition of a Knowledge Toolkit, and
Top Tips sections.
Agency – helping to embed a culture of KM and Knowledge sharing within NLCF
Agency recognises that knowledge and learning are everyone’s
responsibility. Everyone should be involved in the creation, sharing,
implementation and review / updating of knowledge, and this required cultural
change. Tangible examples of initiatives that contributed to cultural change
included:
- Content challenges – bringing colleagues together from across the organisation to look at specific themes, identifying existing knowledge and insights and making it easy to access this knowledge.
- Funding Reflection Sessions – it’s easy to move on when one Funding Scheme closes without formally reflecting on the lessons learned. These sessions provide that valued opportunity to pause, reflect, capture the lessons and share the learning.
- Lunchtime Learning Sessions – creating a culture of regularly sharing information to colleagues in informal webinars. Generating a calendar of opportunities to listen, learn and share; breaking down barriers across the organisation, welcoming and encouraging shared learning.
Added Value – capturing and noting how NLCF adds value
Previous evaluations at NLCF had been contracted out, but by
bringing them back in-house there is greater potential to discover and retain knowledge within
the organisation. In doing so the Team
start to ask questions like how can we better support grants holders? What are
the human stories behind our grants that demonstrate impact? One successful
way of finding out about impact and grant-holders’ experiences was to bring them
together, asking for their feedback and stories!
Nick goes on to outline how the KM approach at NLCF might
evolve over the short term, but that the Triple A Model provides a firm basis
to support and inform this evolution.
Check out the recording!
This 21 minute webinar extract is available to CILIP Members
via the GIG News web pages. https://www.cilip.org.uk/members/group_content_view.asp?group=201301&id=689976
We hope that it informs and inspires!
Share your experiences and comments!
Please join the conversation! How does your organisation
approach KM? Are there points of strength or success that could be beneficially
shared with others? Or are you encountering sticking points and challenges that
seem difficult to overcome? Is there a coherent approach to KM? We will be
delighted to hear from you – secretary.gig@cilip.org.uk
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