Knowledge sharing

Dear [firstname,fallback=Subscriber],

In April’s newsletter, we take a look at sharing knowledge. Many organisations find themselves without the knowledge that they once had, thanks to redundancies; and others find themselves without it when they need it, thanks to cuts in hours of staff. So in this edition we encourage you to (1) look for where the key strategic, managerial and organisational knowledge remains within your organisation and (2) ensure that it is being shared to the benefit of the organisation. And ultimately, ‘knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice’ (with thanks to Chekhov for that pearl&hellip). If you have it, locate it and share it.

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Diana Garnham, Chief Executive of the Science Council, will be leading our discussion over dinner on 19th May. Click here for full details. Successful individuals are never arrogant enough to think that they know it all and have nothing to learn from others. The issue is not just what there is to learn but HOW to learn - from those who may not think like we do, or have the same frame of work reference that we have, or have the same skills as we do. In the ‘boom years’ many organisations had the resources and flexibility to ignore cross department and professional collaboration.
Today, given that many organisations have lost staff during the credit crunch, those that are left will be looked to in order to drive the organisation forward and will need to work ever more across technical groupings. We will have to harness numerous and varied skills and share that knowledge across the organisation. Our discussion will focus on how we do that.

How did the last dinner go down with one of our guests? Back to basics with a tweet?

When does 2 + 2 = 5? When Firm Beliefs is involved…

The value within - where is yours?!

Merlin first made an appearance in our Firm Beliefs consciousness a while back so when it came looking at the sharing of knowledge, it seemed that this charity, which works in some of the most culturally and geographically diverse areas of the world, would have some insight into the effective sharing of knowledge.

“We have staff from all over the world in our head office in London including Uganda, Rwanda, Tobago, France, Pakistan etc etc and obviously our national staff are normally from within the countries we work in, and we work in up to 20 countries at any one time so that is pretty diverse!” says Gayle Nixon of Merlin.
“It's not just an understanding of our programmes that staff need, but an overall understanding of the context they will be working in. It is particularly important for us to gather information from staff when they come to the end of a contract/placement at de-briefings so we can learn if there is anything we can do to improve our understanding of a country and its people and to prepare our staff better.”

We shall be following the fortunes of Merlin, its staff and its projects, over the forthcoming year. A small charity, with a big impact and a broad reach, in early 1993, three young friends - a doctor, a manager and a logistician - decided to create a specialist British charity to send medical teams into disaster zones.

We are able to report the success of Stop the Traffik in contributing to the decision by Cadburys that they will move towards a fair trade approach to their chocolate manufacture. Sharing of knowledge (in this case about the potential impact of non fair trade business practices upon the trafficking of people around the globe) at a grass roots level can lead to major strategic decisions being forced upon large corporations.

What knowledge do you think your customers and stakeholders share about you? In the current market, can you afford not to know? Or indeed keep up to speed with key issues that interest you? Google alerts is one such way — www.google.com/support/alerts

Finally, our last newsletter asked readers if they would let us know of any charitable institutions that might like some publicity in relation to forthcoming events. It seems appropriate that our first entry should combine the Firm Beliefs’ client sectors of law firms and charity. The Co-operation Ireland legal dinner takes place on 23rd April and further details can be found at www.cooperationireland.org/?q=supportus/corporate/2009/legaldinner.

How to say sorry - and mean it! — Firm Eliters continue to share knowledge, over and above the dinner party conversation. We welcomed Andrew Caesar Gordon of Electric Airwaves to a recent dinner and we can now take on board more hints and tips from him via the vodcasts for use in our organisations.

Firm Beliefs Newsletter Readership

We encourage all readers to let us know about charity events with which they have a connection. We are lucky to have a broad range of individuals who read the newsletter and who pass it on to others. Our circulation is currently made up of: