How to Wiki in the Workplace
Posted: December 07, 2009
By Sheila Shayon
Wiki is perhaps the most misunderstood digital term out there. The word is Hawaiian for “fast.” It has been backronymed to “What I Know is.” The best-known most popular example of a wiki is Wikipedia. But few people have seen or experienced creative and useful wikis in an actual business context.
According to Wikipedia, “A wiki is a website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked Web pages via a Web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor.” Ward Cunningham, the developer of the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as ‘the simplest online database that could possibly work.’”
So why is there such limited development in the corporate sector where free and open source resources could be such a benefit? Three key factors are: accuracy, security and social reinforcement.
Accuracy: The best-known example of potential wiki inaccuracy is Wikipedia. The fact that in this public model, anyone can be a contributing editor and thus the data will be less than accurate and suffer a lack of editorial quality control, is actually a misnomer in the corporate arena. Most corporate wikis are behind company firewalls, designed for internal usage, and thus subject to review by one’s colleagues, peers and superiors. People with a particular expertise become passionate editors of other’s submissions and changes are rendered quickly.
According to Alan J. Porter, currently writing, WIKI: Grow Your Own for Fun and Profit to be published by XML Press in May 2010, “Like standard websites before them, wikis have grown to be useful in any number of ways, and the potential of the wiki technology is only limited by the imagination of those who use it.”
Porter profiled Geometrica, the Houston, Texas-based construction company that implemented a wiki-based ISO9000-compliant quality management system. Initially there was strong resistance to the wiki because of traditional perceptions of a sequenced author-edit-publish process that results in a final document that is considered complete and accurate. But, when Geometrica allowed all employees access to comment or edit, the original perception of a linear editorial process yielded. The distinctions of author, editor and authority disappeared. The whole was deemed as useful as the parts. CEO Francisco Castano called it “wiki magic.”
Security: Unlike the Wikipedia model, where access is available based upon an unverified, automated login, most wikis are equipped with built-in controls. Wiki pages can be coded to allow only specific individuals or groups access. For documentation wikis, specific pages can be blocked from edits and only allow separate feedback/comment areas.
“The truth is that a wiki, like any other website, is as open or as secure as you want to make it,” Porter says, “different wikis for different communities, each designed to meet a defined business need.”
Social Reinforcement: To give an internal wiki social cred, WebWorks.com planned a Christmas party and mentioned right off that all suggestions were welcome for locale, activities, menu, dates and transportation options. They did the same thing when the company considered a new office location - soliciting ideas on office lay-out, floor plans, and even environmental factors. Both proved successful.
“Using internal fun projects like this is a great way to let people experience the benefits of using a wiki without mandating its use. Once a user can experience the benefits for themselves, they will be more open to continued use,” Porter says.
Popular wikis like Confluence are pre-configured with individual user-templates, giving users their own space and look/feel. When water-cooler conversation ends, wiki advocates can suggest the ideas generated be put on the wiki instead of an email so that all may see and participate.
Stewart Mader, author of Using Wiki in Education (2006), and publisher of weblog, ‘Future Changes‘ since 2005, offers “8 Things You Can Do With an Enterprise Wiki.”
“Let’s look at eight ways a wiki can help you readjust your valuable time to get more of your essential work done, spend less time on meetings and redundant activities, and more efficiently assemble, refine and reuse valuable information,” Mader says.
- Meeting Agendas
- Meeting Minutes and Action Items
- Project Management
- Gather Input
- Build Documentation
- Assemble and Reuse Information
- Employee Handbook
- Knowledge Base
There are multiple products built specifically for use by organizations such as:
- CenterStage
- Confluence
- EditMe
- GroupSwim
- Mac OS X Wiki Server
- MindTouch
- PBworks
- SamePage
- Socialtext
- Swirrl
- ThoughtFarmer
- Traction TeamPage
An instructive video series, “21 Days of Wiki Adoption,” can be found here.
Digital maven Don Tapscott’s book, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, defines the “Wiki Workplace [as] the environment where people will collaborate in the future, connect and collaborate to create new sources of value.” Tapscott continues, “At the same time, the nature of work itself is changing. Work has become more cognitively complex, more team-based and collaborative, more dependent on social skills, more time pressured, more reliant on technological competence, more mobile, and less dependent on geography. Many employees are already given far more autonomy to decide how and where they want to work. A growing number of firms are decentralizing their decision-making function, communicating in a peer-to-peer fashion, and embracing new technologies that empower employees to communicate easily and openly with people inside and outside the firm.”
A proliferation of Wiki workplaces is probably coming — fast — to a workspace near you.
Sheila Shayon is president/founder of Third Eye Media, third-eyemedia.com, multimedia production with core competencies in broadband production, creative design and execution, and social media. Shayon has several decades of multimedia experience working for companies like Time Warner Cable and Home Box Office.
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