The Benefits Of Internal Use Of Wikis

Many organisations encourage collaboration, communication and innovation, but how many actually put their money where their mouth is? We see wikis as being a great way of nailing all three of these objectives. Below is a list that explains why wikis are a great tool in an organisation. A wiki by the way is a website that allows multiple editors, like wikipedia. In this case I am suggesting that everyone in the organisation is able to access and edit the wiki. 

1. Many hands make light work

No one person can build a Formula 1 team. The fastest cars in the world can only be consistently so when people collaborate. Take away the collaboration and they fall behind. The same can be said for organisations. OK you may have the brightest people in the industry working in your team, but if they are not collaborating you are missing a trick. Collective knowledge is better than individual knowledge.

2. A problem shared is a problem halved

A continuation from point one, it's easier to find the answer to a problem when you apply more brains, skills and ultimately people. 

3. All work and no play make Jack a dull boy

Work can be fun, and easy. Wikis can promote collaborative working by making the process of working together easy and fun.

4. Employees cherish a sense of inclusion

Wikis can create a greater feeling of common purpose - by, for instance sharing the thinking going into policy creation and encouraging participation. The result is a greater sense of ownership for the work produced. This all brings about a greater sense of respect for the company that they work for and for the work that they do. 

5. What's your problem?

Wikis are great for dealing with bottlenecks in an organisation. Social Media guru and Deloittes Director of the Centre for the Edge John Hagel once told me an example of a bus company using social software for dealing with broken down vehicles and locating spare parts. When you think of social software bus companies don't spring to mind yet this was a great example of how social media was applied to a problem area in a "non techy" organisation and delivered amazing results. 

6. This I have seen before this I have seen this before this I have seen.

Wikis can enable duplicated work easier to identify and co-ordinate, particularly if wikis have wide accessibility.

7. Who's not looking over your shoulder?

Make the best practice process open and available to all. Why would you want to shut out the extra brain power of your organisation? 

8. Team building on the best parts of the team

Create a greater sense of unity within a team or group, or organisation by letting all contribute to creation of documents bringing their particular strengths to bear. 

9. That's my idea!

Wikis can enable contributions e.g. seed idea, to be identified and rewarded if that is the culture of the organisation.

10. Reduce time getting up to speed

Wikis can enable faster integration of new people into the organisation and more rapid payback, because they can get up to date information on "how-to" to reduce onboarding time.

11. Reduce travel costs

Wikis enable instant communication via the web. This means that meetings can take place for example of the phone and notes can be captured via the wiki.

12. Know what you are talking about

How many times have you gone into a meeting without knowing what the agenda was. By posting an agenda on a wiki you can get the answers thrashed out before the meeting takes place.

 Image by Jinx1303

This brief list highlights potential benefits of using wikis in your organisation, and outlines how much of it applies to organisations of any size.  We use wikis to work together in our two man band. Arguably the benefits are greater the larger the organisation.

The benefits of using wikis are magnified the more people who have access to them, but of course some risks are magnified as well. The main ones being loss of Intellectual Property and staff thinking that the knowledge gained enables or entitles them to do things they are not qualified to to do.  All risks can be mitigated, but that's another topic.

I could go on and on with advantages but I thought 12 is a nice number to digest. What are your thoughts on all of this?

2011 Social Business Summit Review

Yesterday the Dachis Group and Headshift hosted the London leg of the Social Business Summit. It was a full house and the speakers gave a great range of insights and experiences. 

Peter Kim - @peterkim

MD of Dachis N.America topped and tailed the event as well as hosting questions.

JP Rangaswami - @jobsworth

Talked about how business was always social and how with the advent of excel we became siloed. Now we are talking about putting the social back into business. Nick (@nickodoherty) afterwards coined the phrase "resocialising business". I like that. I loved JP's definition of a teenager. Also JP talked about the concept of "mouse droppings" i.e. we leave little mouse droppings as audit trails as to where we have been and what we have been doing. Brilliant!

John Hagel - @jhagel

For me (and many of whom I talked throughout the day) John was the best speaker. He started out by saying that he wouldn't be using any slides which created a flutter of retweets in itself. He then talked through two main points: 1. Use metrics that matter and 2. Work at the centre of the edge.

Metrics that matter...differs throughout organisation. So deploy social software against metric & where to get max gain#sbs2011 @theparallaxview  24 Mar

 Good insight about social software form @jhagel. Focus on key metrics, not adoption. Start on the edge. Iterate quickly. #sbs2011 @hakanthyr 24 Mar

John's excellent example of focusing on a pain point was a bus company that spent too long looking for spare parts when the buses broke down. They started to used social software to get the process speeded up, which it did and made for a fantastic case study.

Stuart McRae - @smcrae

Stuart created a bit of a flurry around the concept of just because someone sends you an email doesn't mean that you have to read it. As much as I'd agree with that I am finding it hard to ask myself "What is the difference between that and someone sending me a message on LinkedIn, or on Twitter?" I thought that Stuart's slides were very impressive in that they weren't too impressive. For such a large hardware company I was a bit disappointed.

Dion Hinchcliffe - @dhinchcliffe

I enjoyed Dion's presentation though I talked with someone over lunch who was disappointed claiming that Dion wasn't bringing anything new to the day. However it was good to get a recap on where we are with this stuff: Organisations that engage in social business are outperforming others that are not; IBM saw a 29% reduction in email in one year after going social; support costs 30% less when using social channels. I had a brief chat with Dion before the event and it was good to meet him in real life. He seemed a decent enough chap.

Michael Gold from Jazz ImpactMichael Gold - @jazzimpact

Definitely the most surral thing all day happened after lunch. Michael Gold was on stage with a double bass and some cats on keys and kit. Michael compared innovation and creativity in social business with Jazz explaining, wait for it:

business improvisation? I like 2 think of it as "having sex with ideas...doing it night after night creates evolution" @JemimaG 24 Mar

  Michael pulled up a slide with risk and creativity on the axis and explained that drums are in the bottom right hand corner and soloists are in the top right. I found this to have been a bit of a crude oversimplification and couldn't help but put it to him that if jazz is being so innovative and so creative why hasn't it evolved much. The audience laughed and got it but I don't think Michael did. I actually know that jazz has evolved but Michael was playing bebop blues that sounds as dated today as it did in 1968 - I should add that my best friends are professional jazz players and I overdosed on the stuff whilst at university with them.

Though I could agree with some of what Michael was saying. What's the difference between good idea sex and bad idea sex? Answer is here.

I must say that I found Michael and his session very entertaining and it was easily the best "graveyard shift" I have ever been through. The climax of the gig had us all going round the room singing different jazz parts to the others. Really great fun!

Charles Hull - @Archrival

Charlie from @Archrival talking about millenials: lifestreaming, digital identity, expectations of fame and social gaming #sbs2011 @leebryant 24 Mar

Ming Kwan - @mingk 

Ming gave a really honest insight into what it is that Nokia are facing and what they are going through. What was really good is that it's still very much a work in progress. Ming was drafted in last minute as Craig Hepburn had just become a father. Shame that Ming wasn't presenting on her own right as 1. She did a really excellent job, and 2. She was the only female presenter.

Dave Gray -@davegray

Dave was really excellent:

• Lifespan of S&P 500 firm has fallen from 75 years to 10
• If orgs are to develop quicker they much get rid of their territorial instincts
• We should design organisations for connecting, or "flocking"
• Cities are developed by the people from ground up - i.e. the shops, not the electricity and water etc.
• When companies double they become less productive
• When cities double they become more productive

Panel Discussion between @jhagel @dhinchcliffe @jeffdachis hosted by @peterkim

• Some nuggets came out of this.
• #sbs2011 @dhinchcliffe the CEO is the one with the vision to drive#socialbusiness; CIO is the one with the budget @JemimaG
• You can justify anything with ROI calculations. Focus on operating metrics says @jhagel #sbs2011 @driessen
• Who should drive social business? @dhinchcliffe says the CEO (if you can get a hold of him/her) #sbs2011 @driessen
• 'operating metrics' eg relevant churn rates, not ROI @jhagel#sbs2011 @theparallaxview
• "Companies should leverage on capabilities, not on debt" @jhagel in#sbs2011 @AnaDataGirl
• @jhagel lovely @zappos story: all prospective employees go on tour of Las Vegas - anyone not showing respect to bus driver is out  @JemimaG

Lee Bryant - @leebryant

Rounded up the event nicely with excellent slides. Some points:

• we've picked the low hanging fruit in business. Now we need something more: data drives business evolution.
• Ecosystems + passion + active listening = transformation 
• If API's are the sex organs of business evolution then data is the DNA
• Data is the new oil: Many companies sitting on huge datafields. When you socialise that data, it becomes more valuable

Overall I thought the event was really great. I prefered it to last year's. Any recommendations I'd make would be to have a projector with a twitterfeed showing the hashtag. Then the host e.g. @peterkim could interject and ask questions or develop points that the audience want to know more about. A trick that was really missed though was to print the twitter IDs of the speakers in the agenda. Though these are pretty minor points to an otherwise really insightful and entertaining day.

Footnote: I thought the organisers of this event were excellent. It must have been a bit of a headache as the day was a full sellout but the staff were really courteous and helpful and, when it mattered, stayed out of the way when the event was in swing. Many other organisers could take a leaf out of their book! Big nod of gratitude to them ;)