Hello, this is Peter Levesque. Welcome to episode seventeen of the Knowledge Exchange Podcast. This podcast series is a product supported by the Canadian Council on Learning – Canada's leading organization committed to improving learning across Canada and in all walks of life. I want to thank the great staff at CCL for their efforts with this project to advance our understanding of effective knowledge exchange to improve the learning of Canadians. You can download this episode, as well as one of the three future episodes in the series from my website at www.knowledgemobilization.net, from iTunes directly, just search for KM podcast. Alternatively go to knowledgeexchange.podomatic.com Daryl Rock has been a force for knowledge exchange and community development for almost two decades. His work at the Canadian Council on Learning has been breaking new ground and creating the conditions that enable individuals and groups to come together to build new value and understanding of complex and emerging issues. Although Daryl now lives in Vancouver, this interview took place in Ottawa – a city that he feels very much at home in. His focus of bringing people together for mutual benefit has created numerous long-term productive relationships that have benefited communities, institutions, and government agencies across areas of interest. The idea that knowledge exchange involves a “chemical reaction” is an important one – it's not just putting all the ingredients together and hoping something happens; they have to come together in the right way, with the right conditions. I think there are some tasty ideas here – enjoy.
Daryl: My name is Daryl Rock and I work at the Canadian Council on Learning. I'm the Associate Director for Knowledge Exchange and I've been with CCL pretty much since its inception. I'm one of the Senior Management team and my responsibility is knowledge exchange is described, my responsibility is to bring people and evidence together in the area of lifelong learning for the purpose of changing or implementing behavior. And in CCL our conscious decision in the very early stages was to create an organization that wasn't simply a research-based organization but rather turned it around to say we want to influence decision making in this country – what can we do? And we believed bringing evidence to the decision makers was key to that and so we created a unit called the Knowledge Exchange Division and I'm responsible for heading that. Peter: Okay. You've been credited with bringing this accepted definition of knowledge exchange, it's described as bringing people and evidence together to influence behavior. So what does this really mean? How do you think about knowledge exchange in those terms?
Daryl: Well let me tell you why I've come up with that. That to me is…I call it a “cute” definition. It's something that lay people can understand and that's why I created that in my mind. One of the biggest challenges knowledge mobilization – knowledge exchange – knowledge translation – the field of evidence-based decision making if I could call it that, suffers from is a bit of an academic brush.
So people in the mainstream, people in regular decision making world whether it is clinicians or whether it's teachers or whether it's policy makers tend to look at the field by the title of the organization. So whenever you come to somebody and say, knowledge mobilization or knowledge exchange, it's almost like their eyes start to glaze over and then when you start to talk to “well what do you mean by that?” and then you use the academic jargon. This definition, it's not perfect – it's not intended to be perfect. What it's intended to do is capture people's imagination and allow people who have a role to play in using evidence in they're day to day work, better understand what we're trying to do. So bringing people and evidence together; that's a pretty obvious statement to influence behavior because most people in the supply side of knowledge, which is what academics tend to work in, most people see it as informing but I see informing as a little bit of a cop-out because you really…it's a passive thing. I've given you my report it's up to you to use it. If you don't use it, well then it's your responsibility, not mine. So this definition is really not so much a definition as it is a transliteration into modern language. So it allows anybody to understand what we're trying to do. Peter: Why don't you talk a little bit about evidence? What do you mean by evidence?
Daryl: It's interesting because evidence has evolved in its meaning, from my perspective. CCL the way we've defined it; its empirical knowledge, its knowledge that comes through a process that's been in of itself a validating process. So it's not the western civilization scientific methodology only. So you look at traditional knowledge, if you look at ancient records, if you look at a whole series of sources of information and I think I'm more comfortable to be quite honest using the term information than knowledge or even information than evidence because at the end of the day what we're really talking about is bringing people and ideas together, yet ideas doesn't carry the same scientific credibility as evidence. And I think again, evidence is another piece of jargon that we need to realize is western based – it's western civilization based – it's the scientific model based and so and again that's why a lot of people have problems…a lot of people, for example aboriginal people have a problem using the term evidence and a lot of people who use the term evidence have a problem accepting what they would consider non-evidence as evidence. So traditional knowledge for example is equally valid but they don't see it because it's not, in their mind, scientifically based. Peter: Well why don't we talk a little bit about knowledge because I think knowledge is really important as a concept and it's – depending on who you're talking to – through these interviews…people have talked about knowledges, that the evidence that you talk about is on knowledge that comes out of the application of the scientific process, but that's not the only form of knowledge and so talk a little bit about that interface between knowledges and perhaps more importantly, how that relates to the concept of lifelong learning. Daryl: Before I do that why don't I talk…I think that's a very good question but I think you need to understand where I'm coming from a little bit more before I answer that question. The whole concept of knowledge exchange or knowledge mobilization…my entire career has been spent in the public policy social development world trying to change the way society relates to, whether it's marginalized Canadians, whether it's unemployed Canadians - so I've worked in HRSDC, I've worked in the Secretary of State – so I approach knowledge exchange from the opposite side that most people. The terms knowledge exchange/knowledge mobilization actually emerged out of the academic community. It was an attempt…not simply but there were a lot of things going on in the late 90s and the early 2000s, that it was an attempt by academic institutions to validate their product in the mainstream society at the same time it was an opportunity for academic institutions to justify, to demonstrate to funders why they should continue or even increase funding. So there's a whole lot, but fundamentally the concepts of knowledge exchange/knowledge mobilization or the terminology comes from the academic world. So I come from the supply side. A bunch of people in a very, very prestigious environment have a product that they're trying to sell and knowledge exchange/knowledge mobilization evolves from knowledge dissemination because that doesn't work in mainstream. So they're trying to sell their product to a new audience. The traditional audience for academic outputs was academic audiences. In today's society where society is in need of evidence, they decided that their role could evolve but I've always approached it from the demand side. And so what I mean by that is there are lot of issues in this world – in Canada – let's focus on Canada. In the area of lifelong learning there are a lot of issues that are currently at play in society. Whether it's how to integrate aboriginal people in an effective way in mainstream education systems, whether it's dealing with classroom size, whether it's dealing with the concept of keeping kids in school to graduate high school - there's a whole series of issues at play in the lifelong learning world and similarly in social and economic policy in general in need of solution and one of the things that we like to aspire to is evidence-based decision making. And so in the absence of evidence, decisions are made anyway.
So what we're trying to do and I've always said, is what we're trying to do is bring the issue or the concept of knowledge mobilization to flip it around so it's demand driven but in order to be demand driven, you have to then go to the demand drivers. So it's the practitioners, the policy makers – what are your needs? What are your knowledge needs? What are your information needs? What are your key issues and then how can we work together?
So it's actually…the whole concept of knowledge mobilization is supply driven and I've tried to flip it upside down to become a demand driven and that's challenging because on the one hand you have a bunch of practitioners – a bunch of policy makers who have very valid needs but they tend to be immediate needs. They don't tend to be “you know 7 years from now I think we're going to have a problem”. Their issue is, what decisions do we take that both maintain a quality of our service and yet deal with the current environment that we find ourselves in.
On the other side you have a supply system and it is a system and it's a huge massive system and I would actually say systems. The academic world being one and we can talk about other sources and the role of CCL as part of this other source as being supply driven and not necessarily plugged into the demand needs of the day. They tend to be more long term focused – they tend to be focused on the availability of existing data or whatever they're drivers are different from the demand drivers. And so there's not necessarily a natural mix between the two so my belief is that if we can build ongoing bridges between the two – we'll call those bridges, relationships – if we can foster relationships – long term relationships between the multiple supply side drivers and the multiple demand side drivers through various innovative ways – they can be face to face, they can be online – we have great technology now – podcasting as an example – where we can build relationships between people. Of course there's a lot of, like any onion, there's a lot of layers to this and relationships don't just happen, they are a result of a conscious effort – they take time – they take trust and so on and so forth. But fundamentally for me and for CCL the concept of demand driven requirements for information and knowledge is, I think a different approach than the traditional one when we talk about knowledge exchange/knowledge mobilization.
Peter: Relationships – building – sustaining. When I hear those types of words I think of incentives - infrastructure. There's no mystery as to why the academic world or the university system…or systems produces what it produces – all the incentives are built that way and the infrastructure is built that way so if we were to imagine a new system that supported the use of the bringing of people together around evidence to affect their lifelong learning, to affect their relationships, what sort of new incentives would have to be put in place? What sort of new infrastructure would have to be built?
Daryl: What you're really saying is, what is the value added of changing the existing – I'll call them silos. The term that I use and what I believe in the term and the practice of knowledge brokers – knowledge brokering – but it has to provide a value added and the value added for, if you want to take it a little bit farther and go into the world of economics in the business world, you have stock brokers.
Stock brokers bring people, money, and companies together presumably for the mutual benefit of all three and that's what knowledge brokers need to do. If you're looking at infrastructure one of the things that does not exist is a culture or an actual institutionalized function of knowledge brokering. That, if you look at places like SSHRC and other academic funding bodies, their approach to knowledge mobilization/knowledge exchange is to fund the academics to do the actual knowledge brokering. It's like going to your mechanic and asking him to paint your house – he may be able to do it but he's a mechanic. It's like going to your doctor and asking him to fix your car. You need to recognize that there are a set of skills associated with knowledge brokering that are unique to knowledge brokering and academics, while they're great methodologists and that's what they're trained to do, may not necessarily be effective knowledge brokers. Similarly great academics may not necessarily be great policy makers and great policy makers may not be great academics. So the concept of knowledge brokering…but in addition to that I also…nothing in this world will change unless the financial incentives are there to change.
So I think funding is core to the success of any knowledge exchange. Whether that's funding knowledge exchange activities, which CCL does a lot of – we do knowledge exchange – we also fund knowledge exchange or whether that's tying the current funding of knowledge development to a concept of usefulness in society and usability and uptake. So for me what type of infrastructure needs to be developed? There needs to be a conscience acknowledgement of the need for increased funding. There needs to be a willingness on both sides to recognize the value of working together. There also needs to be an acknowledgement on both sides that there are systems and processes in place in the policy and practice world that are not going to be relevant to the academic world or the new knowledge development world and similar there are systems and practices that go on in evidence shops I'll call them, whether that's academic institutions or whether that's think tanks – they're not going to be directly relevant to policy making and practice and that's okay. So we're not trying to say everything that gets done in universities needs to be relevant to some decision making and today that's just stupid. Nor do we say every policy decision or every practice that gets outlined that's underway needs to undergo some rigorous evidence-based academic review. There are things that we know that work and/or that decisions that do get taken that don't require that same degree. In those areas where there is a lack of evidence as defined by the practitioner, I would like to know if I'm doing something that could be done better and I'm coming to you to ask for your help in defining that. Then in those situations it makes sense and brokers can play an important role in that.
Peter: I think knowledge brokers is an important concept. Can you describe some of the key characteristics of a good broker and can you point to some people or organizations that are doing a good job now?
Daryl: Understanding the two sides of the equation. I think it's probably more important for a knowledge broker to understand the role of evidence in policy making and practice than it is for them to be expert methodologists. And I say that because I think what we're really trying to do as a broker is and if you look at a stock broker they need to understand the business practices of companies and they really get in-depth into business practices of companies. They also need to understand at a certain level, the investment desires and needs of an individual. So similarly if you look at this in the context of knowledge brokering, they need to really understand the decision making world. At the same time they need to understand the realities and the concepts – so understanding the realities of the evidence producing world and understanding in detail the realities of the decision making world requiring the evidence I think is key. Obviously they need to understand the elements of relationship building. They need to understand where and how to bring people together.
In addition to the succinct definition I use about…I also talk about…it's not just bringing people and evidence together, there's a chemical reaction that occurs and it's kind of like, you mix flour and water and sugar and if you just leave it like that, it doesn't automatically become bread. You need to put it in the oven. You need to bake it at a certain temperature – you need a chemical reaction to occur and I think it's very important for knowledge brokers to have the tools and the abilities to think what type of chemical reaction can I create to synergize what comes together? And that to me is the biggest...and that's not an impossibility. If people where to ask me where the best skill sets would be developed for people to actually become knowledge brokers, my thoughts are, people who do MBAs and focus on the area of marketing, I think those tend to be the people who have the better…who have a natural inclination because I think there's an natural sort of inclination by certain personal characteristics into being academics. There's a certain personality that goes into academia. There's a certain personality that goes into politics – there's a certain personality that goes into practicing medicine. I think there's a certain personality type that goes into marketing and in doing an MBA level marketing. And I think those skills tend to lend themselves to the concepts of knowledge brokering.
It's bringing people and evidence together and creating an environment that fosters that creation of trust – that fosters a genuine commitment to common objectives – that fosters a willingness to work collaboratively and set aside the other hats that you may wear or the other agendas that you may have in order to work together to achieve a common goal. I think no amount of knowledge brokering and I don't think any amount of knowledge exchange will be effective if people aren't coming to the table with a genuine desire to work collaboratively. It's not just about I have to do this because my grant says I have to do this. It's not just about I have to go see these academics because my boss told me to. There has to be a genuine respect on both sides for the value added that the other side provides.
Secondly, there has to be a genuine commitment to commonly agreed to objectives. So a third person can't come in or one side can't come in with an agenda and say, “okay this is it, do you agree?” There has to be a negotiation and both sides not only have to understand what's going on but have to sign off on it. I really believe in actually having a contract. Not a twenty page document but a one/two page contract where people say, “this is our stated of…our agreement. These are our stated objectives and this is how we're going to work together”. And then I think finally this contract and the whole relationship needs to understand that there's bound to be conflict. There's no such thing as a relationship anywhere that doesn't undergo conflict. So I think it's important to have a clearly articulated conflict resolution mechanism. I think it's important for any initiative of any substance to succeed that everybody agreed to the objectives – that everybody agreed to a process of working together and sure there would be conflict – everybody agree before there is conflict to a commonly agreed to conflict resolution mechanism.
