Step 3: Verify the Objective and Outcomes

What do the participants want to learn?

How do they hope to grow?

What do they need in order to act, convene, influence, or lead?

Now that you have identified the participants, or some of them, revisit the initial work you did when starting to plan the knowledge exchange. As a group, verify that your knowledge exchange initiative is aligned with the development goal, institutional challenge, and the change objective, and that everyone is on the same page with regards to these. If not, work with your counterparts and participants to clarify them before tackling the next step.

Remember that intermediate outcomes are the specific changes participants seek to realize as a direct result of the knowledge exchange initiative. These outcomes might be enhanced knowledge of a topic or a new coalition of peers to help influence change in their organization. At this time, you will need to review these as well with your participants to ensure that they are attainable and measurable.

Determining and/or refining intermediate outcomes

Consider

holding an action planning session (either in person or virtually) to produce a draft list. You could include all or just a representative sample of the participants.
setting up a virtual discussion and posting the proposed intermediate outcomes, drafted by you and your clients, for input from all participants. You can also facilitate an online conversation to encourage participants to refine/define the outcomes or propose new ones.
checking with the knowledge provider(s) at this time. What they know can help shape the intermediate outcomes. These conversations may also highlight the need for an additional knowledge provider or a replacement of the original(s).