In a recent workshop I asked participants to write down all the grumpy thoughts they were having about the prospect of writing a Knowledge Mobilization plan (aka Pathways to Impact statement in the UK). I collected these and put them aside while we got on with a more positive approach.

I want to return to these anonymous grumpy thoughts here because they raise some really important issues.

For ease of reference here are what all those little coloured slips of paper say.

• Power issue
• It feels like almost a whole other grant
• Tensions among the parties involved
• What is it first of all?
• How do you make sure it is effective?
• I don’t like to be portrayed in the media
• Institution support
• That what I have to say won’t be acceptable (or modifiable) for all audiences — or really, I don’t know how to talk to them all!
• If I organize a conference, no one will (be able to) come (or it will be not well attended)
• Media distortion
• Being mis-quoted
• Vagueness of the term “KM”
• Too social — need quite time
• I’d like someone else to do it
• Construction of word text to articulate something that is inherently sound, movement, visually explained

Do you have any others to add to the list. Imagine that the picture in the background is you being grumpy about this whole “impact agenda”. What would grumpy-you being saying about this? Or what are your cynical colleagues saying?

For the purposes of discussion we will assume that all grumpy negative statements about knowledge mobilization/wider impact communicated in the comments of this post are only communicated by the commentor. The person doing the communicating does not necessarily agree with these statements.

No messengers shall be shot. No one will be judged.

(Pushing our unacceptable feelings into a dark corner doesn’t actually fix anything. Let’s get ‘em out there where we can see them and address them. Any judgements of what others say will be deleted.)

Future posts will deal with specific issues. If you don’t want to miss any, subscribe to my weekly blog post round up, or like my Facebook page (and make sure you tick the box that says “show in news feed” — hover over the like button to see it).