Knowledge Promotion

Gaining and Applying Knowledge, as a Tool for Encouraging Change, Motivation, and Team Work in the Jordan Country Office

As Peter F. Drucker, (2010) the renowned academic and management consultant, has said, “Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes”. He also said that, “In knowledge work, you have to start out with the need to change, to grow, to do the new, to run very fast with something that opens up”. We are strong advocates of Drucker’s thinking in the UNDP country office in Jordan. We believe that gaining and applying of knowledge is a core tool for creating and motivating team work and it is fundamental to bringing about change. Change is something we plan for and experience on a daily basis in our office.

The country office learning plan

Within this gaining knowledge context, we developed a learning plan at the beginning of the year incorporating a learning session every two weeks. However, we consider the learning plan to be dynamic and a device that is subject to change, as it should respond to the needs as they arise. For example, during 2010, we have had new staff join our team so additional learning sessions have been conducted to meet their needs.

Knowledge sharing

One of the ways we have adopted for increasing our knowledge is to learn from each other. Our staff gives presentations on topics within their areas of expertise but they have also volunteered to give presentations on topics outside their areas of expertise and this has proved to be exciting and a mechanism for real dialogue. We have also begun to include project managers in these knowledge sharing sessions, who are adding to the richness of the discussions. We are now planning to invite our implementing partners to selected, targeted sessions, especially when there are visiting expert missions. We continue to explore how we can make available the knowledge we have within the country office and our global networks, so as to assist our implementing partners in achieving their national objectives and priorities. This knowledge sharing philosophy underpins our programmes of support and has motivated our team to make a difference..
 

Using knowledge to challenge how we work to make a difference

A two-day knowledge sharing session is about to be held for all our staff on the 9th and 10th August, just before Ramadan . The focus of this session is to encourage and challenge ourselves in how we do our work and to explore how we can improve. The session is to include discussions on global and national guidance from UNDP headquarters, analyzing the ways in which this may direct our programmes of support. Each topic, albeit treated briefly in a two day session, will be a summary of extended discussions that have been held throughout the year. The presentations will be given by staff themselves, since one of the best methods for constructive analysis is through giving a lecture on a topic to someone else. These knowledge sharing sessions are also an opportunity for discussion of our office vision and for examining how our six guiding principles are applied in our programmes of support.

Teamworks
 

We have recently introduced ‘teamworks’ as a mechanism for allowing us to share our knowledge in a more structured manner within the country office, as well as with our implementing partners and other UNCT members. All our ongoing projects have been uploaded on teamworks, which will create a forum to share success, seek experts advice in many thematic areas. A “space” for Jordan country office “ Jordan UNDP” has also been created on teamworks, this tool will be utilized to reach out to our partners through our project managers. We have developed an action plan to guide us in this process. This revised website is also a means for the sharing of knowledge with our implementing partners.

Reference: Drucker, P.F., The Drucker Lectures, McGraw Hill, 2010.