"If HP knew what HP know, we would be three times as profitable" - Lewis Platt, Former CEO, Hewlett Packard
Today I participated at the Mindroute Get-together 2008 and listened to many inspirational speakers. One of them was Mindroute CEO, Richard Hanson, himself. He talked about doin' the "Wiki-blog-dance".
He said, and I agree, that the best way (and maybe the only way) to get a wiki/blog-system like Incentive working in an organization is to make sure it comes from the employees themselves. If the management goes out and says "Hey, this is our new communication system and everyone MUST use it!" it's bound to sink like a rock.
The best way to make a system work is to use it and set a good example for the rest. If I can show how great the wiki is for a few of my colleagues, they will spread the word to other people and after a while more and more of them will use the system. He spoke about four kinds of users:
- The Champ - This is probably one of the initiative takers for the system and a key person i getting it up and working.
- The Enthusiast - These are the champs friends, these are the ones that helps the wiki to grow.
- The Boss - Don't talk too much with the boss, just do it!
- The Garden keeper - These are the persons that love to edit the articles to make them more accessible.
So while the Champ and the Enthusiast work with creating articles and setting a good example, the Garden keeper helps to keep the site clean and easy to read and understand. They do this by inserting subtitles, links, making lists etc. It's important that you have a climate of tolerance to people editing each others articles. The basic idea is that a thousand idiots can make one Einstein. So if everyone gets involved – the joint knowledge, brought fourth through discussions, is more than each part summed up. 1+1=3
So how do you nourish a creative environment? Trash the rules and permissions and go with policies. Let everyone work with everything and encourage them to do the right things instead of telling them what they are not allowed to do. Make a policy for what we want to achieve and how we want to do it.
Don't mind the mess - don't mind the structure
One of the things that I've had a hard time to do is to let go of the thought of the site structure as a tree. But here I believe that there is a problem built in to Incentive. You create articles under the page you are at. Even though that might not be the point, this invites to think of the site as hierarchy. And I have no idea of how to leave that set of mind. A big issue for me might also be that the "create new page from link"-function haven't worked when I've tried it. In Media Wiki (the system that Wikipedia is created from) I believe this works better. Maybe this will be fixed in the final release of Incentive 2.0.
"But where is the time for all this blogging?"
One of the questions that arises when organizations introduces wikis and blogs is "When will we have time for this?". The answer is easy and clear – keep on doing what you are used to, but do it here instead. Throw away your notepad and all you Word-files and use the wiki instead. If you want to discuss something with you coworkers, don't e-mail them - blog about it and keep the discussion in the commentary field. I, myself, have worked this way many times before and it works for me. Not all the time, but most of the time. At incentive.oresundit.org you can find (if you have the right permissions) all my notes working with the new site. Here my coworkers can comment on them (even if they seldom do) and follow my progress. I blog my thoughts to keep a record for myself, but also to hear what others think.
I'm thinking of trying this approach in our upcoming Baltic project - I'll let you know how it goes.
Together we can reach new heights - just don't talk to much with the boss.