Knowledge mobilization requires us to provide knowledge to people making critical decisions that can end forced labour and child labour in a form that is useful and meaningful to them. Creating a product that makes a difference means that you have to start with an understanding of the change you’re working toward, knowing which decision-makers can make that change, understanding and appealing to their values, and making that knowledge available within the spaces and habits they now use to acquire new insights.
Florence Nightingale may have been known as “the lady of the lamp,” but her strength in creating powerful data visualizations may have been her greatest contribution, and threw light on strategies to save the lives and protect the well being of soldiers. Her advocacy for sanitation saved thousands of lives. In one hospital, the sanitation methods she introduced reduced the infection rate from 40 percent to two percent. Nightingale was skilled as a mathematician and in 1858 produced a report with charts and tables that clearly showed that more soldiers in the Crimea died from disease than in battle. Perhaps even more compellingly, she was able to demonstrate that soldiers died earlier than civilians even in peacetime because of the unsanitary and cramped conditions in which they lived. Nightingale’s work as a data scientist was effective for two reasons. The first is that her hand-drawn charts are compelling and clear. But more importantly, they pointed toward clear, data-driven decision making, helping officials see the critical importance of investing in more sanitary measures for the safety and wellness of the troops.
Before you can create an effective report, you need a strategy for change. Traditionally we think of having a communications strategy to support the release of a major report. A research team creates a report, and then a communications team develops and implements strategies to gain attention for that report.
But what if you flipped that, and first identified–as specifically as possible–the change we’re trying to make, and then identified what would convince those in a position to make that change happen to take action and also gave them the tools they needed to make that action effective. When you think about a communications strategy, you may be imagining a binder-sized book that takes weeks or months to write. You probably don’t have time for that, and you’re working with a lot of moving pieces that will change before you get your lengthy strategy written.
To simplify this process, use a set of four questions. These questions can help you focus your effort, narrowly identify who you need to act and what’s important to them, and then identify specific ways to reach them. Being able to clearly articulate the change you’re working toward will make it far easier to think through how to build and write reports that will make a difference.
These four questions can also help you help your colleagues become more strategic. When they’re looking for ways to engage people in solutions, you can work through the four questions together to help identify the change they’re working toward.
