So 8 short days ago I set up my second attempt at a wiki. This one was created to survey our management team instead of the traditional surveymonkey or zoomerang ones that we more often used.
This time we wanted to capture from our team those behaviours that we premote and those we permit in relation to the values of the organization. We also had a third question regarding examples of the consequences of either action. I would guess that out of 100+ management staff, only 2 had ever heard of a wiki.
To my great delight the team ate it up. Good thing is used the pbwiki. (get it, ate it up , pb– peanut butter – okay it’s been a long day and I want to go home).
I started it simple with only one page. An intro at the top explaining what the wiki was for:
We wanted to try a new format (this is a wiki) to get the collective wisdom of the Management Team regarding “What are we Permitting, thus Promoting”. The point of doing it this way is to add and build upon each other’s ideas and reduce unnecessary duplication! A wiki is a wonderful way for us to work transparently together and embrace each other’s thoughts and opinions openly. This wiki will also to help us embrace new communication tools.
Please add your comments/thoughts/edits to the questions below. There can be as many to each list as the team wishes. We have kept it all on one page for ease of use and ease of collation.
I made sure we highlighted that this was to be a collaborative effort, that we needed more transparency between one another (lots of silos here), and that this was NEW (the excitement factor).
I added 6 small instructions on how open, edit, save a page. Then at the bottom of the page were the 3 questions we wanted members to expand on.
Turned out that we had 36 unique entries for behaviours we promoting (good). 71 bullet points for behaviours we were permitting (bad). 34 examples of consequences.
We now have more detail from this wiki regarding the topic then if we ever did it with a survey. If we had sent this out in survey form and only 16 people looked at it, we would have had 16 individual responses. This method allowed members to brainstorm a little more, build on other ideas and come up with much more detail information that we can then take and use to better our whole organization.
The last step I took in introducing our members to the world of wiki was as the one page got really full (you had to scroll to see it all) I took each question/bullet points and put them on their own page. I didn’t want to scare everyone off right from the beginning with 4 pages (insert scream here).
My lessons learner….look for new ways to get your teams to collaborate. Sometimes a new method is enough to generate excitement to participate. Second, KISS (keep it simple sxxxxx), my first wiki may have failed because I had so many pages set up for input on. I thought I was getting things ready for the users, but I more likely overwhelmed them.
I’ll end this with some feedback I received:
“So, i think i fall under the category of unhealthy behaviours that we permit,
as i just accessed the wiki page now (better late than never?!). It is
amazing!!! Absolutely love this format and hope to see it again. It provides
great insight into what others are thinking. “