Knowledge Broker Stories: Laughter-the secret ingredient in being a change agent

I’m a knowledge mobilization manager. Not your everyday run-of-the-mill job. My mother never understands what “I do”. It’s not like she can tell her friends I paint, build houses, or pave highways. “So what does your son do?” (Cough). “Well…he mobilizes knowledge….(cough)” (Pause.) (Awkward Moment of Silence.) “He does what to knowledge!!!”

What does it say about our society when no one understands what you do? What does it say about you?

Its kind-of a funny job title but I get it. I finally get what it means. After 4 years mobilizing knowledge I finally understand what it means to share academic knowledge for the betterment of society. It really has a beautiful underpinning doesn’t it? To share knowledge for the betterment of society. For a better society. To better society. God knows, there are enough problems out there to fix! Homelessness, poverty, violence against women, clean drinking water, HIV, cancer, name your poison. I believe academia is aptly placed to fix those problems. The brightest minds. The Aristotelian children.  The onions in the caramelized onion soup (?!). I believe we need knowledge mobilization managers to take that knowledge and put it to work.

For four years I have been working to bring the knowledge of Memorial University of Newfoundland to the people of this great province, and back from the people to the experts. The two-way flow of knowledge, in a reflective circle, to build new and better knowledge. To do what we talk about in theory – creating processes to position academic knowledge to have impact. Putting Memorial’s knowledge to work. At The Leslie Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development where I work, we stand on the shoulder of a giant…Dr. Leslie Harris, who stood for all that was good. Dr. Harris was a dazzling writer, blessed with exquisite penmanship. He also had a heart for Newfoundland and Labrador, and as former President of Memorial University, did everything in his power to make the University a change agent. Of all the great things the Harris Centre has done (and we have done tons of great things, informing policy, helping rural communities, changing attitudes, building research programs – come see more at www.mun.ca/harriscentre), we are at our best when we subtly (but effectively) challenge the paradigm. When we force the populous to think in different ways. In fact, as Aristotle said, we all have an obligation to contribute to the state (our chosen society). I believe the Harris Centre is leading a modern day knowledge renaissance, awakening people’s conscience to reflect on the state, and their place in it. To understand what it is to be a citizen in a weird democracy, that often cares more about power than dialogue. To unlock citizenship. (I love the words change agent – there rests the punch in KMb)
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So now in its fifth year, the Harris Centre reaches two roads diverged in a yellow wood. On one road is the blazed path of great things we have accomplished (look no further than www.yaffle.ca - a one of a kind research search engine), on the other is the wild, unbeaten trail ahead. There is so much left to do. So much knowledge to position. I best leave this blog in the hands of Dr. Harris who programs our GPS for the unbeaten path:

“Our history shows us that we are survivors. But, as we think of creating the New Jerusalem for our children, and our children’s children, we must be clear that mere physical survival is not enough…what is more to the point, as we take command of our own economic and social destiny, we must also ensure the survival of civility and of strong cultural traditions that inform a distinct identity; the survival of neighbourliness and of a caring and sharing society; the survival of shared community values of hardihood, and honesty, and independence and hard work; and, the survival of what is a very special Newfoundland characteristic, the ability, even in the hardest of times, to see the funny side of life, and to be ever ready to take up the arms of humour against a sea of troubles…”

There lies the greatest insight of all! Knowledge mobilization (solving all the worlds problems) is serious business. But, relationships between academics and community leaders are not only built on knowledge, they are built on the subtleties of laughter! “But of all the elements that contribute to the warm atmosphere of a good relationship, there is one that seldom gets translated into advice or even therapy, yet is something that everyone desires and most people would like more of: Laughter.” (Marano, 2003).


David Yetman

Photo was taken at UBC by Phillip Jeffrey @NCIE

To cite:

MLA format
Yetman, David, "Knowledge broker stories: Laughter-the secret ingredient in being a change agent." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted October 30, 2009. Accessed (enter date).
http://bit.ly/4zXoEi

APA format
Yetman, D. Knowledge broker stories: Laughter-the secret ingredient in being a change agent. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/4zXoEi]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Broker Series, please contact Peter Levesque

Knowledge Broker Stories: How to go from broke to broker in 17 short years

I first told my story (at least my story to date) in a presentation for KMbW in February 2009. I graduated with my PhD in 1991 coming off a Medical Research Council doctoral scholarship at $15,000 per year (I have no idea how I managed to buy the beer I did – probably thanks to Mom). I identified and isolated a protein derived from insect blood that killed bacteria and (presumably) helped the bugs get better after they get a bacterial infection.

Meandered through a post-doctoral fellowship working in HIV/AIDS, and finally left the lab to join technology transfer, where I was brokering relationships between university researchers and industry around intellectual property (kind of but not quite like knowledge mobilization.

Continuing in this line of business, I worked at the Canadian Arthritis Network, and Canadian Institutes of Health Research increasingly engaged in brokering relationships in and around academic research. I landed at York University as Director of the Office of Research Services (now Research Services & Knowledge Exchange) running the grants and contracts for the university which included a small but active technology transfer operation.

It was at York that we implemented knowledge mobilization as a service to faculty. We conceived it first as non-monetary technology transfer for the social sciences and humanities but quickly realized that the unilateral “university push” of technology transfer was only part of the knowledge mobilization story. We developed methods of “user pull”, knowledge exchange and - what I feel is most important - the co-production of knowledge between researchers and decision makers. These activities are all built upon the knowledge broker who is the heart of the knowledge mobilization unit.

I’ve worked with many knowledge brokers and still don’t know one when I see one. I’m an immunologist – does that make me a good broker? I’ve seen nurses, epidemiologists, librarians, psychologists, literacy practitioners, physicists, evaluators, journalists, poets, political scientists, social workers and anthropologists acting as knowledge brokers. I’ve even seen a flight attendant (formerly trained as a priest) learn the principles of knowledge mobilization. What links all these knowledge brokers?

Maybe we’re all wired for empathy – seeing both sides of a question or a situation. Maybe we’re all just smart enough to learn to talk less and listen more.

We stand between two worlds: the world of research and action; the world of science and politics. We become boundary objects spanning boundaries and mediating relationships that enable research and knowledge to matter.

Some might accuse us of multiple personalities, but that’s a different interpretation!

We have some theory to back up our practice and we have a growing number of tools as our different knowledge broker practices link up in networks like the KTE Community of Practice or ResearchImpact - which now welcomes knowledge brokers from Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, Université du Québec à Montréal, University of Saskatchewan and University of Victoria. I travel across Canada presenting our work. We have begun to publish and are active in social media with an active blog and a twitter feed and videos posted on our website. We are part of a profession beginning to grow.

What have I learned on this journey from “broke to broker”?

[1] What we’re doing isn’t new, but we have refined and networked a practice that has happened ad hoc and haphazardly

[2] There are lots of us, but we are isolated in our own disciplines – we need some transdisciplinary space so that brokers in environmental policy can speak to those working in health services, education, immigration & settlement…

[3] Many different paths can lead to practice, but a little study along the way doesn’t hurt

[4] Be open to new people, new ideas and new ways of knowing and doing. You can’t own or control it – share your slice of the knowledge mobilization pie.

Visit David and ResearchImpact at:

dphipps@yorku.ca
www.researchimpact.ca
www.researchimpact.wordpress.com
www.twitter.com/researchimpact

To cite:

MLA format
Phipps, David, "Knowledge broker stories: How to go from broke to broker in 17 short years." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted October 24, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/1VQpLs

APA format
Phipps, D. Knowledge broker stories: How to go from broke to broker in 17 short years. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/1VQpLs]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Broker Series, please contact Peter Levesque

Research Tool KIts

This update comes from Community Campus Partnerships for Health.  At first glance, this appears to be an important source of tools and resources. Although it is written for work in health, many of the components look like they could be adapted to other areas of work:

Group Health Research Institute and its partners - the University of Washington, Institute of Translational Health Sciences, Duke Translational Medicine Institute, and Wayne State University - have developed a new website to help researchers create and sustain successful multisite research collaborations, including those involving community-academic partnerships.  The project team created the site, www.researchtoolkit.org, to enhance the efficiency of research from start to finish, including developing research networks, launching and managing projects, and sharing study results or other products such as data sets, tools, and training resources.

The website was developed as part of a project known as PRIMER, or Partnership-driven Resources to IMprove and Enhance Research. PRIMER was awarded to the Institute for Translational Health Sciences (ITHS) at the University of Washington by the National Center for Research Resources of the National Institutes of Health.  Read the complete press release at:
http://www.grouphealthresearch.org/newsroom/newsrel/2009/091015.html

Knowledge Broker Stories: Work history taking tool by Hal De Lair

My story begins in 2003, when I took on a new and innovative role at the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) as Director of the Ontario Occupational Health Services Network (OOHSN).  The central aim of the Network was to link occupational medicine expertise to the front line of health care, particularly primary care delivery.   With access to that expertise, it was believed that front line physicians and nurses would be supported in more effective treatment of occupational injury and illness.

Through a collaboration in 2002 between occupational medicine specialists at the WSIB and the Ministry of Labour, a work history-taking tool was created for use by primary care physicians.  It consisted of a 4-page document covering various exposures and risks the working individual might encounter.   The intent was for this information to be collected historically and stored in a patient's file.  When that patient presented with symptoms that might be work related, this information would help inform treatment and secondary prevention options.

The problem was a very limited uptake of the work history-taking tool by physicians in Ontario.  They did not have time to fill out a long form, especially one that only provided a potential to enhance treatment.  Our approach to this problem was to create a pilot project in a primary care group practice for the purpose of understanding what might be possible and relevant to front line practitioners.  That project was undertaken in a group practice of physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners and social workers.  As the knowledge broker, we supplied a student nurse practitioner with a background in occupational health nursing.  She spent 2 days a week for a couple of months on site at the group practice.  She also had the back-up and support of occupational medicine specialists through he Network.

The pilot was structured as a continuous improvement project, beginning with a file review to determine current practice in ascertaining work related health information.  That process analysis, which is usually the first step in any continuous improvement model, led to a clear identification that occupational information was generally missing and that patient care could be compromised as a result.  The problem however still remained that routinely filling out that work history form on thousands of patients was way beyond the capacity of the clinic.

The solution crafted by the pilot was to reduce the history taking down to 5 essential questions that could routinely be asked of every patient and entered into the electronic medical record.  Those questions then became the basis for the current, universally available Work Health Exposure Screening Tool which you can find at http://www.stmichaelshospital.com/pdf/programs/occupationalhealth_work_exposure_screening.pdf This tool, or some variation of it, would go on to be applied in numerous, additional group practices in Community Health Centres and Family Health Teams in Ontario.

In subsequent years this approach of piloting new knowledge through local, continuous improvement projects, would extend to many areas. OOHSN conducted pilots in noise induced hearing loss and occupational asthma and dermatitis.

I'm sure this brief story will resonate with a lot of people involved in knowledge dissemination. It promotes the mechanism of continuous improvement projects to refine knowledge components, especially tools, to make them relevant and useful.  This would mean that any KT strategy should include resources to engage target audiences in test pilots on uptake and outcomes.

Hal De Lair

To cite:

MLA format
De Lair, Hal, "Knowledge broker stories: Work history-taking tool." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted October 19, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/2eDwGX

APA format
De Lair, H. Knowledge broker stories: Work history-taking tool. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/2eDwGX]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Broker Series, please contact Peter Levesque

The long road of Deliberative Processes

I received the National Collaborating Centre for Healthy Public Policy (NCCHPP)’s newsletter this week.  To my pleasant surprise, it contained some interesting pieces about deliberative processes.  After downloading and reviewing the documents, (Deliberative Processes - Fact Sheet & Deliberative Processes - Inventory of Resources) I was further surprised that among the resources consulted was the work of Michel Callon and the Loka Institute.

What really surprises me however, is how cautious the Canadian government and its agencies are with broadly implementing and maintaining good deliberative practices.  It already has good examples that can be scaled up.

In 1998, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) launched the Community University Research Alliance (CURA) program - based on deliberative processes found in Science Shops in Europe, Consensus Conferences in Denmark, Services aux Collectivites of Quebec universities, and a history of social enterprise dating back to the 1920s.  It is a successful and standardized program in a portfolio of programs. 

It influenced the Community Alliances for Health Research (CAHR) program at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) in 1999.  This program was considered transitional, was abandoned, and there is nothing of the type currently funded at CIHR.  It also influenced the creation of the PICRI - Partenariat Institutions Citoyens pour la Recherche et pour l’Innovation initiated by the government of Ile de France. The PICRI program goes beyond where the CURA program initiated by bringing together a broader assortment of actors and interests in the deliberative processes associated with science and technology.

With regard to health and healthcare, the Community-Campus for Health Partnerships (CCPH) was founded in 1996. This growing “network of over 1,800 communities and campuses across North America and increasingly the world that are collaborating to promote health through service-learning, community-based participatory research, broad-based coalitions and other partnership strategies. These partnerships are powerful tools for improving higher education, civic engagement and the overall health of communities” has been led by Dr. Sarena Seifer and has been instrumental in bringing diverse people together to work through how to work together.

These are only a few of the examples of work that has been mobilizing community knowledge via deliberative process mechanisms for over the past decade plus.

I applaud the NCCHPP for producing these reports. I hope and desire that it promotes the methods described.  It is long past due and as Ralph Klein, former Premier of Alberta, once said - “the role of a politician is to find the parade and get in front”.  The parade of deliberation relating to health and healthcare is decades long.  People of Canada, we need to tell our politicians that deliberative processes are not just good for democratic governance - they are the basis of democratic government.  So who wants to get in front?

http://bit.ly/11u0xJ

To cite:

MLA format
Levesque, Peter, "The long road of deliberative processes." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted October 18, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/11u0xJ

APA format
Levesque, P. The long road of deliberative processes. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net (http://bit.ly/11u0xJ)

Monieson Centre Seminars: Dr. Waymond Rodgers

The Monieson Centre (http://business.queensu.ca/moniesoncentre) is pleased to invite you to two seminars by Dr. Waymond Rodgers, University of California in Riverside, USA.

Date: October 21, 2009
Room: 403 Goodes Hall

SEMINAR ONE: WEDNESDAY, 12 NOON - 1PM

A MODEL OF THE TACIT KNOWLEDGE LIFECYCLE FOR DECISION-MAKING: FROM CREATION TO UTILIZATION
Abstract:
An important issue for firms is to make strategic decisions on the basis of organizational resources. Many of the criticisms directed towards traditional methods of capturing performance, productivity, and profitability are due to inadequate ways of identifying, measuring and valuing knowledge assets. This paper presents a comprehensive “knowledge process model” incorporating the resource-based literature from economics and knowledge-based literature from organization theory that provides a possible course of action for individuals/organizations to understand and explain knowledge flows' contributions to an organization.

SEMINAR TWO: WEDNESDAY, 1.30 - 2.30PM
MODELING THE VALUE OF KNOWLEDGE WITH A THROUGHPUT MODEL
Abstract:
Companies are becoming difficult to value reliably and accurately due to the economy becoming increasingly intangible. Many of the criticisms of traditional methods result from the inability to value knowledge assets (KA). Innovation and technology are influencing the complexity of production processes and products. Stock market valuations are frequently several times higher than book values. This gap is viewed as evidence that the effects of innovation and technology on KA are very important to corporate wealth. This paper incorporates the resource-based literature from economics and knowledge-based literature from organization theory, creating a comprehensive “knowledge process model” that constructs a possible course of action for information system designers and users of innovation and technology.


FURTHER INFORMATION:
Dr. Rodgers is travelling to Kingston from the University of California and we are holding these seminars back-to-back so that individuals have the opportunity to attend both seminars conveniently. Dr. Rodgers will also be pleased to meet with individual faculty, students, staff and visitors before and after the seminars. If you wish to set up an appointment, please mention this when you RSVP.

Biography:

Dr. Waymond Rodgers is a professor in the A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management at the University of California in Riverside. He has a Ph.D. in accounting from the University of Southern California and a cognitive psychology postdoctorate from the University of Michigan. He is a Certified Public Accountant in California and Michigan. Dr. Rodgers’ accounting, banking and management expertise derives from his employment as an auditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young. Also, he was a commercial loan officer for Union Bank and his portfolio included Fortune 500 companies. His primary research areas are auditing, commercial lending decisions, decision modeling, ethics, trust issues, intellectual capital, and knowledge management. Professor Rodgers has published in Management Science, Communications of the ACM, European Accounting Review, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Journal of Economic Psychology, and the Journal of the Association of Information Systems, among other journals. Finally, he is the recipient of major research grants from the Brazilian Research Foundation, Canada Research Foundation, Citibank, Ford Foundation, National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, the Navy Personnel Research and Development Center and others.

Lunch will be provided. If you plan to attend one or both of these events, please RSVP to monieson@business.queensu.ca by Friday, 16th October.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Monieson Centre
Queen's School of Business, Queen's University
Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6
monieson@business.queensu.ca
www.business.queensu.ca/knowledge

Knowledge Mobilization Works Update

As with any consulting and research business, we have our ups and downs. This has been a challenging year but one that has forced me to be focused and a little brutal with some of my pet projects.

Here are links to some of the latest developments:

1) We had to pull the plug on Manifestation Journal. Despite some good intellectual support and lots of interest, it was just not possible to get funding to support the editorial and production functions.

2) Blog updates:

KMbW welcomes Dr. Howard Schachter

Resources from KMb Workshop at Queen’s

Time Costs: End of Manifestation Journal

10 Quotes on Failure

Scientist Knowledge Translation Training

My immersion into Web 2.0 – Jan Jablonski

Mobility Access Awareness Group - Lesley Strutt

KM Rap: Dr. David Phipps

3) Creation of a Reading List with Reviews - "These are books, articles, and papers that have influenced our thinking about knowledge mobilization. Please suggest other works that could benefit the community of thought and practice."

4) Continued participation in events, lots of presentations and workshops, and a few reports. All the resources are posted in the events section of the KMbW website.

5) More targeted service portfolio.

6) Reflection and reorientation of the Mobilizer Bootcamps. While these were successful events, the cost of delivering across the country without an institutional funder was not cost effective (read - it cost me a bundle). I am taking some time to work through the details and will relaunch the workshops in 2010 with partners. Likely to be delivered within a 400 km range of Ottawa - Quebec City - Montreal - Toronto - Sudbury - Sherbrooke - Albany ...