29/08: Getting Wiki With It
I'm being asked more and more about Wikis from my business colleagues. This latest question came from a surprising source, a dear friend of mine and CEO of a Turkish fuel company. My dear friend, Jan Nahum, invited me out to spend the weekend watching the Turksih GP, which his company, Petrol Ofisi, had recently begun sponsoring. On the way to the race, he had the driver take us downtown by a billboard he was particualry proud of. I loved it and took a picture.
While we were watching the race from his great VIP area, he started asking me about Wikis and whether they were useful in business. Wikis are an approach to allow many people to easily edit a page. The term Wiki is a Hawaiian term for 'fast'. While anyone can edit a wiki page, those edits can be easily rolled back and are traceable to the specific editor.
Back to the race and Jan's questions. While I was busy devouring the delicious lamb kebobs, Jan proceeded to tell me about a pilot project they were allowing employees to create a best practices wiki, where employees could add, update and edit best practices for all employees to use. In the pilot, the managers were uncomfortable allowing just anyone to edit these pages. Falling back on a command and control management style, the managers wanted the wiki to be modified to allow submissions to be reviewed and approved. Jan wasn't sure how he felt about this, so he asked me for my thoughts.
Taking a final sip of my Raki, I shared with Jan a few guiding principals that I have for Wikis. I thought you might appreciate reading them as well:
1- Allow accountable editing by all – anyone should be able to contribute, and everyone should be able to know the source of those edits. Public accountability will ensure that contributions are useful
2- Feedback rather than feed forward control – Wikis make it just as easy to make changes or roll back changes. Wikis allow you to see each change and even compare prior versions. The value of the contributions by as wide an audience as possible far outweighs the issues associated with loss of control.
3- Train potential contributors on the system – Wikis are bit different than other content management systems, be sure to show people how to use it
4- Highlight high contributors – people need to know that their contributions are being recognized. Wikis make it easy to measure contributions.
Back to the race and Jan's questions. While I was busy devouring the delicious lamb kebobs, Jan proceeded to tell me about a pilot project they were allowing employees to create a best practices wiki, where employees could add, update and edit best practices for all employees to use. In the pilot, the managers were uncomfortable allowing just anyone to edit these pages. Falling back on a command and control management style, the managers wanted the wiki to be modified to allow submissions to be reviewed and approved. Jan wasn't sure how he felt about this, so he asked me for my thoughts.
Taking a final sip of my Raki, I shared with Jan a few guiding principals that I have for Wikis. I thought you might appreciate reading them as well:
1- Allow accountable editing by all – anyone should be able to contribute, and everyone should be able to know the source of those edits. Public accountability will ensure that contributions are useful
2- Feedback rather than feed forward control – Wikis make it just as easy to make changes or roll back changes. Wikis allow you to see each change and even compare prior versions. The value of the contributions by as wide an audience as possible far outweighs the issues associated with loss of control.
3- Train potential contributors on the system – Wikis are bit different than other content management systems, be sure to show people how to use it
4- Highlight high contributors – people need to know that their contributions are being recognized. Wikis make it easy to measure contributions.
Ronda Del Boccio wrote:
Thanks,
Ronda Del Boccio