Wiki or Not
Which is it?
Being Bold is so far outside the box for most people that they don't even have a guess where to begin.
Listening to Rob Zombie cranked to 10 on headphones is generally incompatible with deciding things via conference calls.
A wiki is:
Is the wisdom of crowds the enemy of genius? Will a company suffer if it hands over too much decision making to groups?
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One of the behaviours I have witnessed in groups is that very few decisions get made unless someone is designated as the leader.
If one of a group of peers tries to drive to a conclusion, the "who died and made you boss" comments start to come out. It is not uncommon to have more than one way to solve a problem. Getting the team to agree on which way to solve it can be a challenge. Eventually the natural leader will prevail through persuasion and logic, but this can sometimes take a lot of time and cause loads of frustration. Having a clearly designated leader can significantly shorten the process of building a working plan.
On the other hand, if the leader in the meeting tries to force his or her plan onto the team, a poor plan could result. The collective minds of those doing the work generally have a better handle on what the problems are and how to solve them. The leader needs to understand this and allow the team to define the problem and present the plans for solutions. The leader should only facilitate the team through the rough spots and guide them around any potential deadlocks. The perfect leader sets the stage so the team feels comfortable in acting like a democracy but understands that there is a leader in the room.
Ultimately the group has the ability to come up with the better plans; it is the mechanics of getting there that bog things down.
_- Tom, Jul 15 _7:30pm
Anyone who makes a comment like this has not participated in Web 2 community activities. There is good and bad information on the web -- and there are tabloids in print. The advantage of a wiki is the reader who really knows can speak up. By comparison, try writing a letter to the Daily News.
_- William on Jul _12 5:18am
The whole idea of "sensitive information" is pre-wiki, for this denotes the idea that the "information" has reached its highest potential, and that to make it public would only make it less. The whole value behind the wiki concept is that "information" is never truly 'finished', it can always be analyzed from a different point of view, most likely making it all the more valuable.
But ......
But, should everything be up for discussion and collaboration?
How is organizational continuity ensured? Should the janitor be able to contribute to the strategic planning process? What about the people in the call-centre? They are given the task to deliver front-line customer experience. Should they be able to contribute to the creation of organizational strategy? After all, they clearly have something relevant to contribute? But do they have the holistic viewpoint of the organization that takes years to develop and which is required at the strategic apex of an organization?
At the strategic apex of an organization there is an implied accountability. In the wikified organization, who's accountable? All of us? None of us? At whose desk does the proverbial "buck" stop?
And as we democratize organizations and proceses, we imply that all viewpoints are valid. But are they? A wiki is supposed to eradicate the "outliers", the viewpoints that are just plain bad. But what if expertise doesn't win out? What if the loudest and most persistent troll wins?
Are these questions even relevant? Or, should they be reframed into something altogether different?
Maybe the answers lie in an "and".
Maybe some information is sensitive "and" it can be made more valuable through collaboration.
Maybe the ideas of organizational continuity and strategic integrity are still important "and" we can enhance competitive advantage by facilitating the co-creation of organizational vision.
Maybe accountability is still a requisite "and" we can enhance accountability when we democratize processes and enable people to engage in shared decision making.
Maybe we need to ensure that ground-rules are established and known by all "and" we can trust people to do the right thing when they know the ground-rules.
Maybe the question is not, "are we a wikified organization or are we not?" but rather "when do we wiki and how?"
#1 A wiki can pool the talents of experts, retired CEOs, tinkering genius amateurs, obsessive overachieving bloggers, crowd-sourced investigators, hardcore web users, physically distant scholars, and articulate early adaptors to solve a problem or build a public access treasury of information.
#2 Wikis can improve collaboration within and/or beyond corporate boundaries and firewalls and across time-zones.
#3 Listening to Rob Zombie cranked to 10 on headphones is generally incompatible with deciding things via conference calls.
#4 Wikis offer the opportunity for unanticipated players to contribute who have perspectives different from those normally regarded as the subject matter experts. They break down the essential relationship between insiders and outsiders, and the rules that allow only certain so-called qualified people to participate in particular work tasks. Unanticipated players can bring unexpected perspectives, ideas, and they can connect different knowledge points together.
#5 A Wiki Workplace provides greater flexibility for the participant's time management which is an absolute necessity in the modern world.
#6 By creating a transparent process through which people can contribute to problem-solving, solutions can be created through a process of co-creation. By co-creating a vision or a solution, the necessity of facilitating "buy-in" can be removed. There is no need for people to "buy-in" to something that they helped shape, form and create.
#7 Wikis create and support institutional memory, a repository of information that can be referred to by everyone and a method to keep organizational processes current as circumstances change.
Gourville's "9X problem" proposes one will underestimate the advantages of a new technology by a factor of three while simultaneously overestimating the disadvantages of giving up old technology by a factor of three.
This means that new technology will have to give ten times more advantages to get accepted, which is quite a high barrier. Barriers to wiki-ing will likely include:
Security Issues: A belief that collaboration with others is impossible, unnecessary, or risky for work entailing sensitive information.
Political and Cultural: Traditional forms of organizational structure create inherent barriers to collaboration. Being Bold RARELY has positive outcomes for most people.
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD): Management has a tendency to seek enhanced control in a world that is increasingly uncertain. In doing so, they want to know what the future will look like and to direct and enact a specific business plan. But by unleashing their teams with a wiki, anything could happen, resulting in a perception of reduced control.
Urgency: Senior leaders in organizations tend to believe that teamwork, collaboration and joint decision-making are less efficient than top-down chain-of-command management practices though there is evidence that the opposite is actually the case.
Page Last Updated: Nov 12 2:13pm by scriberon@gmail.com