Building and Maintaining Operational Skills During Complex Change – A World Bank Group Staff Learning Case Study

Abstract

In response to a rapidly changing organizational environment, the regional learning coordinators of the World Bank, with the support of their management and teams, launched a highly successful global clinic series to keep staff up to date on operational changes through a centralized learning approach1. With a diverse staff in over one hundred countries, different time zones and a never-ending stream of national holidays, this was somewhat of a challenge. Within 6 months of commencing the series staff from 92 countries and from across all regions had attended at least one clinic. Overall, 34 percent of these participants were based in World Bank country offices. Three key components made this plan possible and included a new outreach strategy, a plan to rapidly produce materials using cutting edge content, and a new content repository strategy. Early evaluation evidence is presented below. There were a number of expected outcomes from the newly focused clinic series and also some unexpected outcomes which are explored below.