Share Advances in Knowledge Through Relevant Pathways

Identify Challenges and Goals
Share Advances in Knowledge Through Relevant Pathways

Purpose

Contribute to the evidence base
Share what you have learned with relevant audiences so that they can benefit from your knowledge and experience

Products

Documents such as reports, white papers and lessons learned
Your work-products, e.g., situation analysis diagram
Learning opportunities, e.g., webinars or presentations

Capturing and sharing knowledge can be a highly leveraged conservation strategy, ensuring that the broader conservation community benefits from your experience. All too often, we omit this very important step. When we do so, we lose important opportunities for leverage and advancement, we risk making others reinvent what we have already invented, and all too often we repeat failures. By taking the time to reflect on what you have learned, and then sharing it appropriately, you can have an impact far beyond your own strategy’s physical or thematic boundaries.

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Identify and consolidate what you have learned.

Discuss within your team, and with key stakeholders as appropriate, the key lessons that you have learned in the process of identifying challenges and goals. Think about what kinds of evidence and knowledge will benefit the advancement of understanding and the work of others. Did your situation analysis reveal any surprises that might apply in other, similar situations? Did you create products during the course of your work, whether they were tools that you used to create analyses or the results of your analysis that might be useful to others? Did you conduct syntheses or collect new information that advance academic science?

When you have undertaken a significant new initiative, especially if it’s in relatively uncharted territory, a “Lessons Learned” document can help others navigate similar terrain in the future. This can be a considerable undertaking, so it’s important to dedicate appropriate staff resources to the project — and to ensure that the project is worth the effort.

Tools You Can Use

Documenting lessons learned.

Conservancy staff can find guidance on writing a “Lessons Learned” document on CONNECT, here. In the book “Learning to Fly - Practical knowledge management from leading and learning organizations," Chris Collison and Geoff Parcell set out ten key steps to facilitating a "lessons learned" review.
Specify audiences for knowledge products.

Different audiences need different kinds of information. Decision-makers might need evidence that natural infrastructure is a cost-effective response to the threat of floods and storms, whereas practitioners will need insight on how to effectively include decision-makers in the situation analysis.

Tools You Can Use

Identify needs by audience.

Conservancy staff can access a tool for identifying needs by audience here.
Document what you have learned.
Now that you have identified your key new evidence and lessons and the audience for that knowledge, it is time to document it. This may be in the form of a paper or report, a presentation, a webinar, a video, or a training. Different audiences look for the information they need in different formats. Scientists may opt for peer-reviewed papers; project managers may seek guidance from online resources or from workshops; decision-makers may require policy briefs. Consider your audience as you determine how to document what you have learned.
Pro Tips
- Ensure that you are focusing on the most meaningful new evidence and insights.
  
  It is impossible to document everything that a team, organization, or partnership will have learned during this work. Ask yourselves what new information will be most useful to the evidence base, and what new insights will best help other practitioners move similar strategies forward.
Disseminate what you have learned through appropriate channels.
Just as different audiences turn to different kinds of materials, they also look for that material in different places. Some may turn to peer-reviewed journals or websites, some to conferences, some to Communities of Practice or discussion forums such as the CCNet Listserve, where practitioners ask questions, share experiences and tell others about interesting opportunities relating to their application of the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation, and topics related to the practice of conservation and sustainable development.
Pro Tips
- Not all knowledge can be documented.
  
  Conservation know-how often comes from personal exchanges or co-learning as it is sometimes called. These exchanges can provide the most accessible opportunity to share struggles, novel process solutions, approaches to sensitive issues with others who can learn from it. Look for opportunities such as workshops, learning exchanges and webinars to tell the parts of your story that can’t be documented.

Minimum Standard Questions

Are knowledge products and planned dissemination pathways tailored to specific, target audiences?
Has the team reviewed intangible lessons and shared ideas for communicating these through peer-learning opportunities?
If major process-based or knowledge advances were made through the effort, has a Lessons Learned or Case Study document been considered?

FAQS Show All

Doesn’t it take too much time to document what we have learned?

Isn’t it enough to publish or post what we have learned? Won’t people find what they need online?

Share Advances in Knowledge Through Relevant Pathways

Identify and consolidate what you have learned.

Specify audiences for knowledge products.

Document what you have learned.

Disseminate what you have learned through appropriate channels.

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