Community Contribution

It's a Wrap: A Recap of Knowledge Management Month

Jun 30, 2021

Learning Lab Team

We kicked off June with knowledge management as our theme because of the importance of this topic during periods of staff transition, which peaks during summer. Our inaugural themed month was also an opportunity to take stock of adaptations and lessons that have been identified over the past year and half of working through the pandemic.

Partnering with others across USAID, from the Knowledge Management and Organizational Learning (KMOL) team to the Digital Strategy team, and with contributions from our partners, we shared resources to highlight practices, tools, cases, and experiential knowledge in this space. Starting with the KMOL team’s webinar, Knowledge Management in the Era of COVID-19, we examined the broad scope of knowledge management. The Managing Knowledge cluster in the CLA Toolkit contains a range of related KM tools.

With a panoply of subtopics to choose from under the knowledge management umbrella, we zoomed in on after action reviews (AARs) and digital knowledge management. These areas felt particularly relevant to current needs given trends in working from home and a desire to learn from how our activities and processes have changed over the past year.

In her two-part series, Christine Murphy shared guidance on conducting a variation on traditional AARs – the rapid after action review (RAAR). This post demystifies the time and energy demands of AARs; it is also accompanied by a handy Google Doc template, adaptable to your organization’s needs. Other contributions around AARs include instructions and a template for conducting an after action review survey – especially useful for remote-work constraints – and why including before and during action reviews alongside AARs is beneficial to designing and hosting training.

Digital knowledge management is not new, but what it means in practice is changing rapidly. The more than 20 resources shared by our partners in the Implementing Community Contributions to MEL During the COVID-19 Pandemic collection was the place to start. This hub showcases the tools and resources that partners have used to digitize monitoring and evaluation, technologies for M&E in unpredictable environments, and much more. Wonder what collecting and sharing lessons learned in an innovative, online format could look like? Save the Children shared insights and an example with us of creating just such an interactive catalogue.

Below is a complete list of the resources shared over the past month. We encourage you to browse these and many more on Learning Lab. As always, we welcome questions, comments, and submissions from the Learning Lab community. Reach out to [email protected].

Looking forward to more curated content? So are we! Our next themed month is August – stay tuned!

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General Knowledge Management Resources:

Blogs

Introducing Learning Lab’s June Theme: Knowledge Management! | Learning Lab Team

Collections and Clusters

Managing Knowledge, CLA Toolkit Cluster | USAID Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning

Processes, CLA Evidence Dashboard | USAID Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning

Resources

Managing Staff Transitions through CLA: Preserving Institutional Memory as Staff Come and Go | USAID Bureau for Policy Planning and Learning

KMOL Webinar, Knowledge Management in the Era of COVID-19 | Agency KMOL

Knowledge Management Sustainability Tracker | US Global Development Lab