IIRR generates valuable knowledge and lessons through its programs, projects, country teams, and organizational experiences. Our organizational skills-gap assessment identified an opportunity to strengthen how this knowledge is captured, shared, and translated into learning that can be applied across teams.
While staff are generally able to identify and document lessons from their work, there is a need for a more consistent approach to determining what knowledge should be captured, how it should be documented, where it should be stored, who should have access to it, and how lessons can be shared and applied beyond the team or project where they originated.
IIRR is seeking a pro bono consultant with experience in organizational learning or knowledge management to help develop a practical approach that fits the organization's existing structure and ways of working.
The project should focus on creating a system that is useful and sustainable for staff, rather than creating a large or overly complex knowledge-management platform. The consultant would work with IIRR staff to understand current practices, identify barriers to knowledge sharing, and develop practical processes and tools that can be integrated into existing workflows.
By the end of the project, IIRR would like to have:
An organizational learning and knowledge-sharing framework that outlines how IIRR can consistently capture, organize, share, and apply lessons and knowledge generated across projects and teams.
A practical lessons-learned process and template that staff can use to capture meaningful learning from projects, activities, successes, challenges, and adaptations.
A recommended knowledge-sharing structure, including guidance on how lessons and resources should be organized, stored, surfaced, and shared across relevant teams and country units.
A practical approach for turning lessons into action, including how IIRR can identify recurring themes, communicate relevant learning to other teams, and incorporate lessons into future programming, proposals, training, or organizational processes.
A staff learning session or pilot in which the consultant works with selected IIRR staff to apply the proposed process to real organizational knowledge or lessons learned.
Success would mean that IIRR has a simple, repeatable process for turning individual and project-level knowledge into organizational learning, allowing useful lessons to be more easily accessed, shared, and applied across teams.
