Four years ago, as UNDP launched its Strategic Plan for 2022-2025, it also set out on an ambitious journey to reimagine how knowledge is generated, shared and applied. The Reimagining Knowledge Management: Strategy and Action Plan was a cultural shift. It reframed knowledge not as a by-product of development, but as its most powerful driver.

The concept of action confidence, coined by Otto Scharmer and Eva Pomeroy, captures the moment when knowledge, reflection, and intention converge into meaningful action, even when the outcome is not fully known. It is about trusting that we have enough collective intelligence and shared purpose to take the next step.

A new knowledge architecture

We are witnessing a sharp decline in human development, particularly in least developed regions. Crises are deepening and unequally felt. However, the past four years have also shown that crisis is also a crucible for innovation. Whether responding to climate shocks, conflict or a pandemic, UNDP’s ability to learn in real time has become a defining feature.

The Knowledge Management Strategy aimed to make UNDP a seamless, knowledge-sharing organization. This meant investing in digital platforms like SparkBlue and Viva Engage, and incentivizing staff to become both contributors and curators of knowledge.

A new generation of Communities of Practice (CoPs) offered real-time spaces for peer learning. They were engines of collective intelligence.

“The Knowledge Strategy was designed as a network strategy, supporting UNDP and its partners to lead with bold, courageous development investments with a robust and wide-reaching knowledge.”

—Laurel Patterson, Head of Strategic Partnerships and Communications, UNDP Crisis Bureau

Listening to the frontlines

One of the most powerful shifts was the recognition that knowledge lives in experiences and is expressed in action.

Take the Resilience CoP’s a community I’ve personally had the honour to lead over the past two years. It’s most recent consultation was titled “What does real recovery look like?”. From post-earthquake Nepal to conflict-affected Libya, the group emphasized recovery must be locally led and rooted in trust. The conversation gave delegates a reality check before heading into the World Resilient Recovery Conference in Geneva.

Similarly, the consultation that informed UNDP’s new global report, Development at Risk: Protecting Gains and Unleashing Opportunities Amid Crisis, brought together over 100 contributors. They investigated what it means to reclaim agency in a world of cascading risks. From digital activism in Bangladesh to community-led watershed governance in Panama, the consultation surfaced a mosaic of strategies for navigating uncertainty and complexity. 

Community-driven inquiries  

The strategy’s second pillar, sharing knowledge through dynamic networks, came alive through the CoPs. In the first half of 2025, CoPs have hosted 29 knowledge-sharing events attended by more than 2,300 colleagues from 131 countries. 

We know that risk-informed development investments can reduce the human and financial costs of disasters. So how can we better activate and design those investments, especially in fragile and crisis-affected settings? 

This is the kind of inquiry CoPs are uniquely positioned to explore. The Stay and Deliver webinars created safe spaces for colleagues to share what that truly means. From Syria to Haiti, Sudan to Ukraine, the sessions blended human stories with operational insights, forging bonds and building the courage to act together. 

“To ensure UNDP remains a trusted partner in fragile and crisis settings, we must continue to invest in knowledge systems that are synthesizing evidence, grounded in lived experiences and that are fostering collective insights. Changing contexts require adaptive institutions in thought leadership as much as in operational agility.”

— Corli Pretorius, Head of Research, Analytics, Learning and Innovation, UNDP Crisis Bureau

From insight to impact

The third pillar, applying knowledge, was perhaps the most ambitious. How do we ensure that what we learn changes how we work?

Two consultations by the Resilience and Environment CoPs informed UNDP’s positioning and service offers in climate and crisis-related issues.

The first focused on loss and damage and gathered insights from over 40 countries. It identified 10 concrete opportunities for UNDP engagement, from integrating loss and damage into national climate plans, to generating data through post-disaster needs assessments to guide solutions for displacement and non-economic losses.

The second consultation explored systemic approaches to building drought resilience. The dialogue surfaced priorities such as anticipatory action, integrated drought governance and community-led solutions, laying the groundwork for UNDP’s emerging drought resilience strategy.

What I’ve learned

Four years on, several lessons stand out for me:

Knowledge is not a product. It’s a process and it’s acquired through experience. This is the core of action confidence, that the deepest learning happens through doing, not waiting for perfect knowledge.

Digital platforms matter, but only when paired with human facilitation. The success of SparkBlue and Viva Engage hinged on community managers who nurtured engagement and connected the dots.

Focus matters. Issue-based priorities like loss and damage, rooted in real policy needs, helped galvanize action and align efforts. 

UNDP’s new Communities of Practice Playbook provided a strategic framework for designing and managing these networks. It helped shift CoPs from ad hoc engagement to intentional community-building, anchored in purpose and designed for collaboration (engagement cannot be assumed!).

A call to collaborate

As we look to embark on our next Strategic Plan, the question is not whether to continue this journey, but how to deepen it. In a world of cascading risks and growing polarisation, the crisis of multilateralism is no longer abstract. It’s unfolding in real time. Trust is eroding and cooperation is fraying. Yet this is precisely where UNDP’s Communities of Practice have shown their value as connective tissue.

CoPs are platforms for collective intelligence. Tthey offer a model for how multilateral institutions can stay relevant: by listening, learning, and leading together.

The future of knowledge in UNDP and the global development community could build on the foundations laid, while addressing emerging needs:

• From communities to ecosystems: Expand CoPs to include external partners, academia, and civil society.
• From sharing to sensemaking: Embed tools and capacities for horizon scanning, foresight, and systems thinking into how we generate and apply insights.
• From participation to power: Ensure that knowledge processes are inclusive, purpose-driven, and designed to shift policies and programmes, not just gather input.

As we begin this next chapter, we invite partners, old and new, to join us. In a world of uncertainty knowledge is our most powerful form of resilience. And resilience begins with trust—in each other, our insights, and our collective ability to act. That’s action confidence. And that’s what we are building.