Tip9: Ask the Wiki.
September 4th, 2010
Prompt people to use the wiki. When someone asks about creating space for a project or revising a document, encourage them to use the wiki.
Relentlessly push the wiki usage
This is the bad news. It doesn’t really matter how well you prepare the wiki launch. You will need to (hopefully you will have some early adopters that will support you) push and push and push to get the wiki to its critical mass. Once everyone more or less accepts that the critical information is in the wiki, at least the more dedicated members of your team will have the good habit of keeping it up to date.
Not everyone will participate
It is always easier not to do what should be done. Many people do their job only for the pay check. They are not interested somebody would actually save time later if only they would update a wiki page from time to time.
Entropy always rises, unless you add energy
If you ever had a thermodynamics course, you may remember 'thermodynamics’ second law. This law states that in a closed system, entropy (which is a degree of chaos) always rises. Unless you add energy from an external source, systems migrate to a state of absolute and total chaos. This energy is what you should add. Each time the system tends to decay, you need to put in effort to put things back on the rails.
There is a nice similarity to many business processes in general and wiki updates in particular. You will need to keep paying attention to the quality, completeness and usability of the wiki.
Can I have my own wiki?
A typical question if you are responsible for one or more wikis in your organization. In larger, more regulated industries I have seen many times that the default question to this question is NO. Or processes and procedures are so complex that people actually don’t bother asking the question.
Most of the time it is a good practice to let a motivated team have their own wiki. A minor requirement is that, when needed, content can be linked in between wikis.
If processes, licenses or any other reason prevents you from creating a separate wiki, it is perfectly normal to make a sort of navigation menu on the wiki’s main page. Each menu option then navigates to a sub-wiki where a team can regulate itself in terms of content and frequency of update. Enter the team’s name, the name or pictures of the team members on the navigation page. It will make clear that a subsection really is their private domain.
Tip9: Ask the Wiki.
September 4th, 2010
Prompt people to use the wiki. When someone asks about creating space for a project or revising a document, encourage them to use the wiki.Relentlessly push the wiki usage
This is the bad news. It doesn’t really matter how well you prepare the wiki launch. You will need to (hopefully you will have some early adopters that will support you) push and push and push to get the wiki to its critical mass. Once everyone more or less accepts that the critical information is in the wiki, at least the more dedicated members of your team will have the good habit of keeping it up to date.Not everyone will participate
It is always easier not to do what should be done. Many people do their job only for the pay check. They are not interested somebody would actually save time later if only they would update a wiki page from time to time.Entropy always rises, unless you add energy
If you ever had a thermodynamics course, you may remember 'thermodynamics’ second law. This law states that in a closed system, entropy (which is a degree of chaos) always rises. Unless you add energy from an external source, systems migrate to a state of absolute and total chaos. This energy is what you should add. Each time the system tends to decay, you need to put in effort to put things back on the rails.
There is a nice similarity to many business processes in general and wiki updates in particular. You will need to keep paying attention to the quality, completeness and usability of the wiki.
Can I have my own wiki?
A typical question if you are responsible for one or more wikis in your organization. In larger, more regulated industries I have seen many times that the default question to this question is NO. Or processes and procedures are so complex that people actually don’t bother asking the question.Most of the time it is a good practice to let a motivated team have their own wiki. A minor requirement is that, when needed, content can be linked in between wikis.
If processes, licenses or any other reason prevents you from creating a separate wiki, it is perfectly normal to make a sort of navigation menu on the wiki’s main page. Each menu option then navigates to a sub-wiki where a team can regulate itself in terms of content and frequency of update. Enter the team’s name, the name or pictures of the team members on the navigation page. It will make clear that a subsection really is their private domain.
Tip1: Grassroots approach
April 7th, 2010
Start bottom-up, to build the ownership.
Tip 1 in the article "Top 10 Organizational Wiki Tips (and how to use them)" on http://www.ikiw.org/2008/01/21/top-10-organizational-wiki-tips-and-how-to-use-them/ says "Grassroots is best. Start from the bottom-up so people build a sense of ownership of their wiki contributions."
There are many sides to this tip. Typically wiki usage has come from the tech community in a company. It's the project leader that throws some stuff on a wiki and some software developers begin to add content to it. With some luck (and the right company culture) you may get the unit managers and business people on it. Rarely you will get sales or account managers on it. (Those you typically won't get on any system.) I have recently come across someone who succeeded in introducing it up to the VP level. But he hastened to add it had took the company 6 years before reaching that level of adoption.
You don't need to start in the IT department
With WordonWiki, we can work on multiple targets. Any part of the organization that has some content to be shared like background information, business processes, policies and even modest knowledge bases can benefit from the virtues of a wiki. We can finally break away from the software development background. One of our successful implementations started from a sales support department. This company has a need to share the process information needed to get support the sales department in creating complex proposals. Only later the wiki was also used by the IT department.
One important topic you may not loose sight of, wherever you start from, is the "ownership". People need to feel they 'own' the wiki content. It are their attachments, word documents and other mails that finally can go to the wiki.
How to increase wiki adoption?
As a teamleader or unit manager, these are some things you can do to get the wiki more easily adapted:
- When you get an email from a team member with an attachment, asking for feedback, send the mail right back suggesting to add it in the wiki so everyone can give feedback.
- When someone comes and ask how something should be done, refer to the wiki. If that particular piece of information is not there, propose to add it to the 'Processes' or 'Knowledge base' section.
- If you got a team meeting and some team member asks a question about some topic that others seem to know from the top of their head, always ask: "Could you have found that in the wiki?". If so, tell the person to search for it next time. If not, ask the person who knew that particular bit of information to put it there.
- Builders that are about to start constructing a house, always take a day or two to 'prepare the site'. Many things need to be set up that will make live so much simpler when the actual work starts. Projects with less tangible results would also be helped by this 'prepare the site' phase. A wiki can be one of the first actions you should take. It can be initially as simple as 1 page stating the project's high level goal and due date. Get people around a table, put on an overhead projector and start editing the wiki with everyone around the table. Build a list of topics you and your team members will need to think of. Quickly turn these links into new pages and start filling in with the details of the first level detailing
Please post replies below if you got other grassroots approaches that have helped you.
Organisational Wiki Adoption
January 10th, 2010
This is a very good presentation by Mike Cannon-Brookes from Atlassian.