Leadership, management and big picture

From ilri-comms ilriwikis

ILRI Comm's leadership / management and big picture thinking

The formal management of the Communication and Knowledge Management (CKM) team lies in the hands of Shirley Tarawali, following the departure of Peter Ballantyne as head of CKM until a new person is recruited. Meanwhile, a small group (Ben Hack, Ewen Le Borgne, Susan MacMillan and James Stapleton) that formed the leadership group together with Peter Ballantyne while he was acting head of CKM is gathering on a regular basis, virtually, to discuss issues that CKM staff indicate as 'needing action' or that seem to be important to review and tackle. This 'big picture group' is only an advisory group without formal decision power. Any outcome from a conversation at the moment is only a 'recommendation' unless expressed otherwise by Shirley Tarawali.

The team works out of a rolling list of issues introduced below (direct link to the [https:docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Lq9me4ZX0T8PvNGK-XbNBmHJ7gX69-1SYBW4WpCZMaQ/edit#gid=0| Google spreadsheet here]). See also the [https:www.yammer.com/cgiar.org/#/notes/3178500| Yammer page on this].

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Whenever issues appear they may be dealt with differently:

  1. [MORE INFO NEEDED] Needing further ‘framing’ and who can provide it – if unclear
  2. [FIX NOW] Something we can fix quickly – who does it by when?
  3. [DISCUSS HERE] Something that we can fix but will take more time and conversation ie. needs to be tabled in one of these chats.
  4. [DEFER TO HEAD] Something that we can’t/shouldn’t fix until the new CKM head comes in.

Some of these issues are so important (or so specific) that they will also be addressed as a group or at least involve other CKM staff members to this group.

In any case, anyone is welcome to suggest a new issue to add to this rolling list (on the tab 'new issues') and to explain what are the key questions to this issue and what is expected from a conversation about this in as concrete terms as possible (e.g. about a conversation on starting a corporate profile on Instagram, the outcome should be sthg like 'decide whether or not to start an Instagram account and clearly attribute responsibilities for setting it up and managing it' rather than 'sort it out' or 'decide what to do with Instagram'.