ILRI 'comms' planning meeting Addis Ababa 4-5 June 2014

On 1 July, a new 'communications and knowledge management' unit will take effect bringing together former KMIS and PA teams. The CKM is the base for a wider 'ilri comms' community of practice comprising all staff working on communications and knowledge management across ILRI. The new unit clusters staff into three teams (embedded staff are associated to each team):

Knowledge, publishing and curation
Knowledge, engagement and collaboration
Communications, awareness and advocacy

Objectives

Move towards a 'one comms' team and set of consistent products and services and quality levels Finalise the new communications and KM structure, and mechanisms to make this effective Develop a 'service' package to deliver across ILRI Review 2014 major project commitments across ILRI Initiate 3 year team workplans Agree any other changes and actions needed to effectively manage this change process

Agenda

Wednesday

Time	Activity	Notes
0900	Team intro icebreaker and exercise	Ewen
		THE NEW COMMS AND KM TEAM - REORGANIZATION
1000	CKM at ILRI - developments since January 2014 ( previous meeting)	Peter
1030	Break
1100	New structure - review, fine tune, operationalization * principles * making it work * change process management * Team development priorities * KRAs and work plans	Peter
1230	Break (lunch provided)
1400	Exercise * making it work – for us, for me * Communicating the changes within ILRI	Ewen
1500	Summarize actions
1515	Perspectives on CKM	Shirley (skype)
1530	Break
		BRAINSTORMS
1600	Looking to the future - Feedback from the ILRI 'positioning survey	Peter (Shirley by skype)
1620	Looking to the future - Big comms opportunities and challenges for CKM team	Ben
1730	Reflection and close	Susan

Thursday

Time	Activity	Notes
0900	Agenda for the day
		CKM STRATEGY AND PLANNING
0915	CKM strategy and plan - brief update	Peter
0930	Three CKM team plans – exercise * Knowledge, publishing and curation * Knowledge, engagement and collaboration team * Communications, awareness and advocacy	Ewen
1030	Break
1100	Major CKM projects and priorities for 2014	Peter others
1230	Break (lunch provided)
1400	Exercise - ILRI 40 what it means for us	Susan
		CKM VALUE FOR MONEY PROPOSITIONS
1430	CKM 'service packages' - elaboration and finalisation	Groups
1530	Break
		NEXT STEPS AND ACTIONS
1600	Next steps, actions (including any issues 'parked' for follow up)	Peter
1700	Close

2014 'BIG' projects

On 22 May, we brainstormed what are the very BIG flagshop projects that we MUST deliver in 2014 Numbers of asterisks indicate expected levels of effort Names in [parentheses] indicate the current 'lead' driver of this activity

MUST DELIVER

ILRI@40 [susan and peter, with shirley overall leader]
Website re-design [peter]
CKM change process and recruitment [peter]
CKM strategy and plans [peter]
OCS rollout comms [ewen]
Salesforce CRM [ben]
Annual highlights for 2013 [susan]
Regional comms enhancement [peter]
Open access [peter]
Food safety book [tezira]

DESIRABLE TO DELIVER

CKM retreat/innovation activity [peter]
Reimplementing ILRI's 'Live Talks' seminar series [ewen]
ILRInet / Sharepoint / Office 365 [peter]
Impact briefs series [development by iain wright, approval by MC, with strategic advice from susan]
Cattle breeds of Africa coffee table book [project led by tadelle dessie, with strategic advice from susan]
Livestock Global Alliance [project led by shirley, with susan and peter giving support]

Participants

Abeba Asmelash Abeba Desta Abenet Yabowork Alan Orth Angeline Wafula Nekesa Apollo Habtamu Asabech Eshete Ben Hack Bethelehem Alemu Bizuwork Mulat Daniel Hailemichael Dorine Odongo Emaelaf Kebede Ethel Makila Eveline Katingi Ewen Le Borgne Fanos Mekonnen Goshu Cherinet Jane Gitau Liya dejene Meron Mulatu Muthoni Njiru Paul Karaimu Peter Ballantyne Sisay Webshet Solomon Kilungu Susan MacMillan Tesfaye Jemaneh Tezira Lore Tsehay Gashaw

Excused: Albert Mwangi Simret Yasabu Vivian Atakos

Meeting notes

Presentation by Peter Ballantyne about CKM changes

See the presentation.

Questions and Answers (Q&A):

Q: The names of the 3 teams are a bit strange
A: See parking lot issues
Q: Training - will Tsehay take care of all training activities (e.g. how to write a blog post, how to use emails etc.)
A: No, it's mostly a role about coordinating all training activities on CKM knowledge, attitude, skills, tools and approaches. In coordination with e.g. HR, ICT, CapDev...
Comment: Internal communications: yes we have a role to play in showing the way, setting up tools and processes, training others on this, but we need to recognise the limits of our bad internal communication (e.g. related to colleagues' [bad] behaviours)...
Q: How much of our work time will be assigned to our home team?
A: There will be 0 control from the home team leader.
Q: What is the role of the secondary supervisor?
A: In the assessment, your supervisor will come back to the 2nd supervisor to get additional feedback from a professional point of view... HR is trying to get someone working across from you as that supervisor... It's another variation of a 360 degree assessment. Because e.g. Apollinaire may not now what a professional newsletter looks like - the secondary supervisor provides technical feedback.
Q: What does the dotted line mean (in the organogram)?
A: It represents secondary reporting e.g. formally Evelyn reports to Peter but on a day-to-day basis Evelyn reports to Tom. Ditto with Susan and Peter/Shirley.
Q: There is a big question / gap about awareness... what do we do about this?
A: We don't have the skills in-house now but we'll recruit IRS/NRS about this. Right now we don't have anyone that can write a policy brief on animal genetics... It's ok since it's a new objective of ILRI but we have to work on this.
Q: Tezira: most of my work is focused on producing and documenting research outputs. The CKM teams that program comms will be associated with depends largely on our individual job descriptions.
A: We put them in the engagement team because it was thin and we wanted to balance all teams - perhaps Tezira can be aligned with the P&C team.
Q: The LGI-LSE job is related to that team
A: Yes. Only part of your time is related to your work on awareness and advocacy etc.
Q: A lot of work comes on our plate e.g. from Management, from a scientist etc. When thinking about ICT services, they have a helpdesk etc. Is that how you think Comms will work?
A: Whichever solution is to make sure that as a community we deal with it among ourselves using e.g. the FAQ section on the wiki; perhaps this could work with a helpdesk, but in principle scientists should go to the comms person from their team... Somehow, e.g. Tsehay should not receive all requests to set up a wiki from anyone and everyone, it should be channelled by specific comms folks.

Session on 'What's in it for me/us and Making it work'

Group work results:

Group 1 (Paul, Evelyn, Peter, Abeba D, Bethelehem)

Nightmare scenario (including problems that actually happen at ILRI and --> suggested solutions):

Unclear roles --> Clear JDs, KRAs, structurel; well shared
No incentives / no rewards --> Regular community recognition, awards
Repeating mistakes
Work overload --> Time management, set priorities, say 'no', manage expectations
Unresponsiveness
S__i__l__e__n__c__e__ (__n__o __c__o__m__m__s) --> 'Constructive correcting' + feedback
Lack of openness (not sharing)
Not listening
L__a__c__k __o__f __c__o__n__f__i__d__e__n__ce --> chance to learn; give opportunities to express selves; open door
O__n__l__y __r__e__a__c__t__i__ve
Slow/poor technical (net) systems
Negative mindsets / attitudes
Working alone
Silo thinking
Holding back others' growth
--> Have some retreat, annual meeting, face to face time to build team spirit / social

Group 2 (Susan, Goshu, Bizuwork, Tsehay, Apollo, Tezira)

Nightmare scenario (happening sometimes at ILRI and --> suggested solutions)

Micromanagement --> Empower staff
No resources / travel --> Enlarge travel budgets appropriately
No skills / equipment --> Increase the research budget for comms work
No partnerships with scientists
No delegation of leadership
No time
No buy-in from staff
Poor judgment
Great unclarity in CKM
--> Support regional staff as well as principal campuses
--> Set up a process for adjudicating disputes, decision-making etc.
--> Make room for discussions with scientists on freedom to say what's not working
Engage with others and be flexible around change processes

Group 3 (Abenet, Ben, Solomon, Liya, Dani, Jane)

Nightmare scenario (and --> suggested solutions)

Drown in email by cc'ing everybody all the time --> develop good netiquette
Spend all our time in meetings/ on coordination --> short meetings (stand-up?)
Not share (drop Yammer) --> Work out louder
Embedded staff are not available --> use video conferencing
Wait for feedback forever -->
Unclear JDs --> Have JDs to manage expectations
Do too many things in parallel, do not limit work in progress -->

Group 4 (Dorine, Alan, Tesfaye, Abeba A, Meron, Ethel)

Nightmare scenario:

Lack of buy-in from our supervisors
Unable to demonstrate the value of new structure / team to their work/programs
Certain skill sets lacking

Key steps to take:

Communicate this plan / structure at a wider scale
Proper planning --> Annual comms strategy for ILRI as a whole and how does everyone plug in
Retreat to build team further

Group 5 (Emaelaf, Asabech, Muthoni, Sisay, Angela, Fanos)

Nightmare scenario:

We don't embrace the change (we continue as we were)
Miscommunication among 'teams'
Capacity isn't met on specific things (new)
Lack of monitoring of the transition (lost)
No working outload

What's happening now:

Lack of teamwork (no comms/sharing)
Working in silos
No thinking outside the box
Lack of openness on what 'I' think more like what 'WE' think

Possible solutions:

Build team spirit --> motivation (team building, retreats)
Promote innovation (improve practice / processes)
Change working cultures (learn from your team mates) and sharing/openness
Work out lout --> less reporting --> more sharing
Short term training (HR / L&D) "Unit focus"

Skype-in contribution from Shirley Tarawali

Hopefully everyone contributes to this ILRI comms rollout and owns the change;
This is the DNA of making ILRI fit for purpose and responding to the critical success factors;
We are already doing extremely well. A month ago I was in an email discussion with Board secretaries about the way we manage our Board document and one of the senior persons in another CG Centre said: "ILRI is always at the forefront of this sort of initiatives. Social media also: I'm jealous of ILRI". A board member also raised the point of seeing the influence of ILRI enhanced by ILRI comms + appreciating getting slides and materials. Also recognition for the outstanding knowledge management and communication work, and they wanted to know more about how we implement the Open Access Policy...
Hopefully the next two days will help concretize this work and all our ideas

Q&A:

Q: Do people also have some comments about improving our work?
A: Managing expectations, finding out who to go to for solving problem xyz, the website to become a truly global window.
Q: In our table we talked about creating KRAs filling 80% of our time so we get 10% to innovate and another 10% to help others... But we don't do that, we don't include that in our plans.
A: You're right we should plan leaving this quality time not specified. You are supporting research but you don't always know what you have to do and so some of your KRAs should have some time that is not allocated... e.g. 30% of your time on a KRA and 50% of that may not be specified...
Comment: we need also clear commitment from the management. e.g. Tezira using free time to work on PTC communication when it is not officially part of my workload.
Q: As individuals, do we get an opportunity to belong to professional associations
A: In your performance assessment, KRA, PDP etc. you can actually mention the things you want to be part of and get time allocated (that time could be shared with your program etc.)

Looking to the future

Big comms opportunities and challenges for CKM team

Exercise: CKM Trends Mapping Click here for higher res mind map

Discussion summary about the three teams

(Carrousel & fishbowl) In the carrousel section, Peter, Susan and Ewen sat around a table and participants went around to clarify the work in that section, provide comments, ideas and suggestions)...

Awareness and advocacy

What is it?

The A&A team focuses on various kinds of institutional, strategic and external communications. This work involves originating, packaging and sharing content (e.g., in the form of key messages, posters, exhibits, blog articles, opinion pieces, news releases, policy briefs, photofilms) so as to engage key stakeholders in ways that bring attention to, interest in, and support for ILRI's mission and work.

A&A has four major functional areas: 1 CONTENT CREATION: Researching, writing and editing, as well as developing and implementing content strategies, e.g., for messaging, issue framing, regular blog articles, opinion and advocacy pieces, big issue syntheses 2 MEDIA OUTREACH: Managing news media relations and orchestrating social media campaigns, e.g., through press releases and events and regular strategic use of online social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Linked In and aggregation tools and sites such as Pinterest, Storify and RebelMouse 3 MULTIMEDIA PRODUCTIONS: Overseeing corporate photography, photofilms, videos, posters, exhibits 4 CORPORATE PORTFOLIO: Evolving ILRI's corporate identity through designs, topics and messages for corporate materials, e.g., annual highlights and calendar and high-profile slide presentations and events

Fields of communications that this team/function rely on include scientific writing and editing, content curation, media relations, social media outreach, photography and multimedia production, print production, data visualization, design/institutional identity, public awareness, advocacy campaigns, and corporate communications. A&A work requires development of 'content strategies' that ensure great user experience and optimal audience reach. It requires an ability to frame issues appropriately for different stakeholder groups and to synthesize disparate scientific and development information in compelling ways.

The aims of A&A are to help ILRI influence selected groups (e.g., to modify their opinions, change their behaviour, support livestock development), and, where appropriate, to advocate certain research-based and pro-poor policies/practices/actions. Its overall purpose is to help ILRI have bigger research impacts through wider engagement of influential people and institutions and ideas in its work.

The A&A team depends on the work of the E&C and P&C teams and also works particularly closely with ILRI research program and project leaders, senior directors and the directorate, who are the 'public face' of the institute.

Q&A session: Suggestions for how to implement the comms changes:

Have ILRI directors inform program leaders as to what embedded communications staff should and should not be doing (embedded comms staff should not be punished for not taking on extra work, such as comms work for other programs)
A message should be delivered to all staff explaining who does what in communications (complete and use Q&A comms resources wiki for this)
Comms staff should use Yammer to request help / ideas from other comms staff when their managers ask them to take on work outside their remit
Comms staff should learn to say 'no' (in productive, respectful ways)
Comms staff should work with CapDev to organize sessions for brainstorming ideas on how to solve comms problems (including workload problems)
Comms staff should request support in the above from ILRI's new People and Organizational Development (POD) Department
Comms staff should organize Comms Clinics for Comms People and attach these to annual Comms retreats
Comms staff should learn how to better plan their work and work out loud
Comms staff should plan and go on holidays!

Engagement and coordination

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What is it?

The E&C team focuses on engaging, collaborating, co-creating. It aims at learning, sharing, picking people's brains to get more insights, get more effective, develop relationships and partnerships. It develops a very strong process expertise (process facilitation and documentation).

As a result it has to focus on the WIIFM (What's in it for me) factor to attract people. E&C happens through face-to-face (meetings, events, bilateral discussions) and virtual contacts (social media, web). E&C works externally too (e.g. ILRI strategy process consultations would be a typical 'E&C' initiative including partners) but it certainly is the team that focuses on internal communications. It is most closely connected to the CSFs 'Fit for purpose' and 'getting the science rights' and, centrally, 'partnerships'.

Two of its flagship projects for 2014/2015 will be OCS and the Livestock Live Talks.

Q&A session?

How can we call upon facilitation (Muthoni and Angela as points of contact in NBO?)?
How to do facilitation (do it yourself, observe, enroll in the upcoming ILRI facilitation training course co-created with ILRI comms and CapDev, check the Knowledge Sharing Toolkit)
How to deal with preparing Powerpoints? With preparing video and multimedia products?
Does E&C lead social media? --> No, but it has to do with it around engagement campaigns, moments when we pick the brains of our staff, partners, 'customers'...
Who responds to social media messages at the moment? --> No one
Does this relate to digital signage? --> Yes, though the management of digital signage is under P&C
How does this connect to HR, Cap Dev? --> Unclear for now
Shouldn't we focus also on online facilitation? --> Yes, we need to develop that capacity in house and beyond.
How do we engage people virtually? --> It can be through e.g. Twitter and social media interactions, wiki notes, skyping people in, or fully virtually (e.g. like elearning, web conferences etc.)
Does this team deal with Office 365, Yammer etc.? --> No but we should champion the practice/use of these media
How do we adjudicated time-spending conflicts? --> Talk with your manager (flag the problem straight on), have managers talk with one another, review this in the 6-month review
Is it like events logistics? --> No, but it works hand in hand with logistics for events of course

Ideas for the E&C team?

It is clear that there will be growing pains in this new structure, we need to remain open about it, have a learning approach and focus on getting more effective rather than get bogged down on problems.

Publishing and curation

Summary discussion

Fishbowl discussion At the end of the carrousel discussion, all people came to a fishbowl where Susan, Peter and Ewen shared insights from their carrousel discussions. Some seats were left open for anyone to come. The conversation is captured below (except the first 30%).

Q: How do I deal with providing support for Jane?
A: Jane (e.g.) needs to know her scientists etc.

But in practice it's difficult e.g. I know what has to happen from that team. Scientists need to work differently. The front line are embedded people. Scientists talk to us in Addis and get work done. Let it be clear. Among us, if sthg comes in we need to cc: each other

(Fanos) I know how to go around. We're thinking about giving training to regional folks but I will not have enough expertise. We will need your support.
(Dorine) Responding to wikis, blogs etc. is part of our daily job as embedded folks
(Evelyn) What if you were to move because you don't belong to the home you were appointed?

There is a meeting at the end of the year to review this... You're stuck until the end of the year though. About KRAs etc. we will do a review

(Jane) Internal communication: what do we have to do about this?

It's sthg that we have to deliver on, and HR, IT are also doing some work on this. We need embedded folks to help us with internal comms. Q: To what extent is that an HR role? A: I don't know. We will have this

(Fanos) About the induction program, to what extent should we go to the comms team as opposed to HR?

A: You have to make sure that scientists in your team communicate... And we have to make sure we work with IT etc. (Tezira) Internal comms, from my perspective, is the comms among the food safety & zoonoses team. We have a regular monthly meeting etc. We circulate the notes. It's making sure that team members are aware of thing and have implications... There's another level which is ILRI-wide internal comms and that might need some extra inputs. (Angela): Is internal comms going to be part of my 60% on engagement? * A: It's part of our engagement... it doesn't matter so much if it's strictly 'engagement' work etc. and you need to think about what could be your best contribution.

(Muthoni) What about our comms strategy? Our scientists don't always what comms is at ILRI?

A: We have a plan that will address this. If we burden ourselves with a strategy etc. we won't work.

(Tezira) At what point do we get our colleagues (scientists') ideas and suggestions?

A: We could bring their views into the review process...

ILRI @ 40

After a short PPT-free presentation about the events and happenings planned for ILRI@40 we split ourselves in four groups focusing on: a) communications coordination, b) publications, c) cool ideas to engage anyone/everyone, d) regional support.

Regional support to ILRI@40 ILRI @ 40 is actually ILRI @ 3, 5, 12, 18 depending on the country we are talking about --> develop a timeline and sketch the pre-history of ILRI?

Use the events in the countries to do some forward-thinking / visioning about upcoming ILRI work in those countries, e.g. as the start of a strategic consultation and engagement process with regional partners
Inform regional folks about ILRI@40 plans
Send our East Africa folks to the regions during those events to be there too?
Develop fact sheets 'ILRI in (country xyz)' covering past presence, current projects, exciting new ideas and stories
Support with language translation (French, Portuguese, Vietnamese?)
Support seminars
Organise a special 1.5h Livestock Live Talk seminar featuring 3-4 country offices
Provide publishing support (for the fact sheets)
See if we can organise a photo film about work in those regions (subcontracted?) to feature at/around the events?
Pull all resources, publications (the major stuff only) including videos and pictures, on a special section of the website dedicated to these countries and ILRI@40 activities
Use digital signage to feature special regional featurings.

Publications for ILRI@40

Use local media (live radio interviews, newspaper etc) to reach audience at local level; (eg. Sheger FM 102.1 is well listened to Station in Ethiopia)
Bookmarks that will be distributed to mass audience
Science blog post showing ILRI past, present and future
Flyers that will be distributed to universities and vocational schools about livestock “Big Facts”
Posters about eg.”African Livestock Breeds”
CD/DVD of “ILRI @40”
Banners
Stickers for cars and buses (eg. stickers that will be put on minibus taxies in Addis Ababa/Ethiopia)

Cool ideas to engage anyone/everyone in ILRI@40

Poster series
Postcard series
Series of livestock-, science- or development-related quotes (African proverbs, etc.) that can be typeset in capital burgundy letters and appear on t-shirts, mugs, posters and via a special scheduled '40-Day Count Down' program on our digital signage
'Life Begins at 40' series for internal fun!
Wall murals by local artists
Children's pictures (e.g., 'of what livestock mean to my family') generated by a contest (could be used to form the murals?)
Pictures of livestock (see Safaricom idea?)
'Time travel' pictures (then and now pictures of staff, lab equipment, etc.)
Video blogs---30-second spots of staff interviews to be broadcast daily somehow
Digital signage---Versions of the video blogs with dialogue inserted in balloons
Map of the 'ILRI diaspora', with ILRI in centre, our networks around us

More cool ideas were explored in a further session on communications for ILRI@40. Here are 9 ideas on how to ensure great communications for these events.

COORDINATION: Appoint an overall communications coordinator and committee for ILRI@40
COUNTRY SPECIFIC PRODUCTS: Get materials published in local languages suiting local agendas and produce relevant and branded packages of materials to send to our regional offices
SUBSTANTIVE UNIVERSAL PRODUCT: Produce a series of 40 big livestock facts and have these translated into major languages
SUBSTANTIVE UNIVERSAL PRODUCT: Produce a series of livestock impact briefs
ENGAGING UNIVERSAL PRODUCT: Use NGOs like Shujazz in Kenya and School Milk Day in Ethiopia to gather children's drawings of 'what livestock mean to my family'
ENGAGE SCIENTISTS: Produce a series of short scientific staff bios---ask each scientist to provide a picture of what ILRI@40 means to her or him and a few sentences on why s/he chose that picture
FUNNY STUFF: Insert in line drawings or pictures of people bubbles of funny sayings
IMAGES: Recycle the photographs obtained for the African Cattle Breeds book in a new series to decorate ILRI@40 events this year (maybe black-and-white images with burgundy tagline 'better lives through livestock' and no mention of ILRI anywhere on the posters---just our 'brand' there
PLANS: Develop and implement plans on how (and where) to communicate all these comms for ILRI@40 plans to all staff (e.g., via our comms wiki, new Linked In ILRI Group)

Big projects

Peter introduced the series of big projects that are planned. He then invited all participants to brainstorm about other possible big projects that may not be listed.

Group a:

Must deliver:

DVD series: NBDC, ILRI @ 40, - this year anyhow ILRI 40 aftermath: coping with the wave of publications... DAGRIS collection / database for livestock information CG Space upgrade...

Desirable:

Social media review / strategy WLE and Bioversity migration to CG Space... - expecting this year anyhow Enterprise social network / Yammer Komms Klinics overhaul KMC4CRPs Group b: Comms and coordination This group needs leadership for overall comms coordination

Regular periodic updates

through committees Livestock matters Meeting Emails wiki yammer

firming up agenda
prepare publicity materials
Social media campaigns
Branding and guidelines

After that, we worked around four main areas of work: ILRI@40, internal communication and livestock live talks,

Internal comms and Livestock Live Talks

The main idea would be to focus all internal comms activities around themes for campaigns run for one, two or three months. Friday Morning Coffees (FMCs), digital signage and other internal comms platforms and tools would focus on the theme too. These campaigns could also entail:

VIPs of the month - the persons to go to in order to find out more about the focus theme
Related resources from the past (re-using web stuff and publications)
Organise interactions on social media (Yammer, wikis, in relation with the focus theme), hopefully drawing more people to use these platforms in that way
Organise quick and dirty 'hard talk' interviews about projects, initiatives etc.
Run an ILRI TV channel
Align digital signage content (no video though)
Show these videos at FMCs
Use the information centre to run (2x / year?) e.g. social media top 10, together with nice coffee and cookies

Friday morning coffees:

Introduce projects, partners teams,
Mini Open-Space
Quizzes & games
Lab tours, Genebank tour
Have 3/4-monthly poster and picture exhibitions at FMC
Have some mini interviews e.g. 'what do you think they're doing' (Finance staff interviewed about BeCA)

Livestock Live Talks:

Run them every two months
Focus on cross-cutting topics (e.g. landscape/ecosystem perspective) rather than just our research themes
Cross fire debates with two people arguing about an issue

Parking lot issues to address sooner or later

//Issues that were addressed in the parking lot session are indicated with a (*)

Who replies to / monitors questions on corporate social media until the positions in A&A are filled? Task force to come up up with solution that will inform the JD?)
Have we / do we need to map people's interests going forward in the new structure
Schnitstellen management (dealing with the work flow)
Visualizing commitments and limiting work in progress
(*) Communication behaviour principles
Names of the three teams
(*) Capacity development for the team
(*) Helpdesk / dispatching requests for comms support
Interest in branching out? How do I find out if this is possible? Answer: It's not until the end of the year but with the end of year review we can review this too.
(*) How do we schedule ourselves so that we have time to help transfer our skills to others and offer our expertise to other comms staff?
How / when do we know we are best structured?
Making it work: embedded and floating staff
(*) Transversal support: facilitation (Muthoni & Angela in Nairobi?), Social media (Liya?), Video in Addis (Bethelehem?)
(*) Social task management

Principles of communication behaviour

Disclaimer: This is ideal, but it's about cultivating such a mindset, progressively, for all of us.

See the change as enabling (rather than constraining), as an opportunity (rather than a challenge): "use this to your / our advantage" instead of of seeing this as more work, more barriers
Be open, flexible
Be cooperative (peer assist) and useful
Flag problems when they happen (not after they have escalated)
Walk your talk and lead by example
Avoid silo team thinking - keep at the back of your head that we are 'One ILRI Comms'
Self police and follow a principle of mutual accountability --> Use the many eyes / I's
Keep others in the loop and connect the dots (Cc: people in)
Work out lout (narrate and share your work)
Reflect on and document your work (e.g. ILRI Comms FAQs and other sections describing our work practices)
Reflect and review this change
Focus on safe fail (this is a safe environment to make mistakes)
Ask for forgiveness, not permission (don't let redtape stop you, work around)
Give feedback:

Positive feedback Critical but constructive feedback (always provide alternative solutions if you criticise sthg)

Celebrate (and document) success!
(Personal knowledge mastery) Your effectiveness helps everyone
We are at ILRI but we are also in CRPs (it's not just about ILRI)

Next steps

Commsplanning jun2014

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