The Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) Capacity Assessment Tool was developed for use in workshop and meeting venues in which an organization and a facilitiator work to determine an organization's competencies to carry out SBCC programming in three areas:

• Planning and design,

• Program implementation, and
• Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and research

A facilitator administers the tool to members of an organization and provides the scoring along with feedback, which serves as a baseline and identifies the gaps in the organization that require strengthening. The same tool can be administered at a later point to provide data that shows improvements in specific competencies and where additional work still remains.

Video can be used to great effect in change and KM projects in order to 'tell the story' in powerful ways. This short video was used in a change project to encourage users to move to FOSS (Free and Open Source Software). The video was also part of a competition where users could enter to describe the moment when that"saw the light" about FOSS. In this way the story is told and emphasized using a variety of media.

In January 2005, USAID/Madagascar requested the Health Communication Partnership (HCP) to assist the Government of Madagascar, specifically its National AIDS Control Committee (SE/CNLS), to develop a behavior change communication strategy targeting HIV prevention among youth and young adults. The Ankoay, or Eagle, approach was launched in April 2005 through the National Scouting Federation which unites six scouting organizations. The Ankoay program was assessed by the SE/CNLS after one year of implementation and was judged a national “best practice” in HIV prevention among youth.

Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (1895-1975) was a Russian philosopher, critic and scholar who wrote many influential works of literary theory and criticism. His works, dealing with a variety of subjects, have inspired groups of thinkers who have incorporated Bakhtinian ideas into theories of their own. These thoughts on language use are particularly interesting in Change Management and Conflict Management and include:

Stories are vitally important in times of change – they bring a sense of meaning and purpose to the human experience. Stories contain elements that enable us to 'travel forward in hope', even if we don't like our fellow travellers. Clearly managing the story of 'what is going on' is vitally important in situations of conflict and change. This is because people resort to violence and brutality when the story collapses. In change and transformation management, the work of the storyteller may include:

• Accessing the conversations that are occurring in the situation. Experience has shown that this role is best accomplished by an ‘outsider’ who does not have a particular affiliation to any party to the conflict.

• Helping to understanding the possible impact of these stories in the situation - especially if they evoke emotional responses or build 'vicious' or 'virtuous' cycles
  

When most of us were at school failure was seen as something that was negative, should be avoided and often worth punishment. And yet most learning theorists agree that it is only through failure that we really learn – as opposed to just memorising. Failure is useful when it helps us critically appraise our own performance. This is evaluation is an example of feedback. A simple way to think of feedback is experiencing the output of your own performance as a new input.

Students of psychology and education are becoming increasingly aware of the vital role that feedback plays in how we learn. All complex systems (like your body, your organisation, your family, your community) change their behaviour or learn through feedback - even if this means weaving in and out of the best path (like Wiener’s boat example) rather than sticking to the best path in any strict way.

While we all know something about power, working in conflict or change management requires a clear understanding of power and how to decode and understand it. So what is power really and how is it constructed? Our world identifies certain individuals as 'having power' and then proceeds to make them more powerful by talking about them in the media. Politicians, high profile business leaders, characters from the entertainment industry and those frequently in the public eye are often said to examples of ‘powerful people’.

A useful way of decoding any phenomenon is to go beyond the 'what is it?' question and rather look at 'what does it do?'. In organisations, power can do many things. It can speed things up, slow things down, alter trajectory, transform our understanding of ‘what is going on’ and divert attention to something altogether different. We each have some measure of power and your position of power could be defined by:

There is a wealth of know-how in Africa about how conflict and change can be mediated and managed in creative ways to the benefit of all. The KM, Conflict & Change SIG provides a space to discuss approaches to Conflict Management, Change Management and the management of post-conflict scenarios, particularly in an African context. Here we combine cutting-edge knowledge with ancient approaches and stories that can be usefully applied in a wide range of situations. In addition to exploring some unusual and very African approaches, we also look at continental efforts by NEPAD, the UN and the AU to ameliorate conflict.

When engaged in Change Management project, we often use a KM framework to guide and share elements of the system's functionality with client. This simultaneously engages Systems Theory, Logical Framework Analysis (LFA), Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Dialogic approaches in project work. The novelty of this approach is that is both analytical and analogical simultaneously and creates a multidisciplinary framework for engaging complex information. It has proved particularly helpful in working with African government and NGOs. The process is generally completed within 3 days as an organisational ritual and outputs form inputs to the change process. The enquiry framework asks the following key questions when we assess organisational culture and the nature of a system:

1. What are the roles and the relationships that make up the complex social system under investigation?