{"id":64,"date":"2012-03-30T04:53:16","date_gmt":"2012-03-30T03:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/knowledgeetal.wordpress.com\/2012\/07\/30\/a-knowledge-retention-technique-importance-of-business"},"modified":"2016-10-26T13:29:52","modified_gmt":"2016-10-26T12:29:52","slug":"a-knowledge-retention-technique-importance-of-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.knowledgeetal.com\/?p=64","title":{"rendered":"a knowledge retention technique: importance of business trips and missions"},"content":{"rendered":"
By a stroke of serendipity (a meeting with one of the speakers while he was in London) I went to Khartoum early in the New Year to participate in an event run by University of Khartoum styled \u201cKnowledge Management Capacity in Africa<\/a>\u201d.<\/div>\n

It promised to be an interesting event since unlike a previous mission to Khartoum, Nyala and El Fashar I was to be based in one centre for the week. Also the list of practitioners and speakers is very heavily weighted in favour of the African continent and I was the sole European representative. An honour indeed!<\/p>\n

I was asked to focus on a couple of topics: Missions and Creative Commons. More on the latter in a subsequent posting. Here\u2019s a taster from the abstract I wrote with Victoria Ward for the event:<\/p>\n

Missions are one of the key ways any development bank or agency can collect, disseminate and synthesize knowledge but the opportunities to do so are often overlooked or wasted.<\/p>\n

Most of the processes are focused on producing a report (back to the office report- BTOR), managing risks and making decisions yet every component can be adjusted and fine-tuned or used in more than one way.<\/p>\n

This presentation, based in part on a mission to Sudan conducted in 2010 by Sparknow working alongside the World Health Organisation (WHO), will examine a variety of mission collection methods and discuss how the \u2018fire of the field\u2019 can be brought back into an organization.<\/p>\n

Imagine you are a bank looking to set up a new Islamic finance operation targeted at the private sector in West Africa. There are few peer groups you can look to for advice; it\u2019s by and large unchartered territory. What are your options?<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 talk to the founding fathers of other Islamic institutions<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 undertake a scoping mission to the country<\/p>\n

\u00b7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 identify others in your own institution that have core skills you might draw on.<\/p>\n

You actually do all the above but in addition you put in place a programme to ensure that you capture all the learning\u2019s from this new venture; the nuances around operating \u2018offshore\u2019 from HQ; the peculiarities of the culture and the way things are done and; you create a missions guide and a mechanism for feeding back what you learn into your organisation. This charts Sparknow\u2019s mission journey illustrated by some of the techniques we\u2019ve found to be of value.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh and this time I am going to remember to take nice new shiny dollar bills and not my credit card.<\/p>\n

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By a stroke of serendipity (a meeting with one of the speakers while he was in London) I went to Khartoum early in the New Year to participate in an event run by University of Khartoum styled \u201cKnowledge Management Capacity … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[593,597,599],"tags":[13,23,26,54,59,62,65,66,67,79,111],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-culture-process-issues-operational","category-knowledge-capture","category-knowledge-techniques-technologies","tag-back-to-the-office-reports","tag-btors","tag-business-trips","tag-khartoum","tag-kmca","tag-knolwedge-management-in-africa","tag-knowledge-management","tag-knowledge-retention","tag-knowledge-transfer","tag-missions","tag-sudan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knowledgeetal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knowledgeetal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knowledgeetal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knowledgeetal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knowledgeetal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.knowledgeetal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110,"href":"https:\/\/www.knowledgeetal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions\/110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knowledgeetal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knowledgeetal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knowledgeetal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}