Wiki That!

Are we just a workforce of sheep?

I guess I needed something to piss me off enough to get me back in the writing saddle. 

This blog post by Dan Woods (Forbes.com) did it for me.…

“In 2005, McKinsey & Co. made a big splash with the concept of tacit interactions, processes that can't be automated in a step-by-step manner. Examples include negotiating a deal, managing staff, writing a blog, providing great customer service and selling a product.

Tacit interactions are carried out by knowledge workers who assemble information from a variety of sources and perform tasks that may be done differently each time. Tacit interactions involve improvisation, taking action and moving forward based on what you find out.”

The article goes on to highlight several approaches and products that deal with these “tacit interactions”.

Tacit Interactions?!? 

Are you kidding me? 

Don't they mean "work"? 

Did we really need a study from McKinsey (not to mention more goofy consultant-speak that nobody understands) to realize that as ERP has matured, the cycle time required to process transactions would shrink? And wouldn’t it just make common sense that what is left is the activity that occurs “between the transactions” and would end up representing a greater percentage of the whole than was the case pre-ERP? 

Yes, people working “between the transactions” would be those “tacit interactions”, the phrase these geniuses coined so that no one would understand the obvious and would feel compelled to call in a McKinsey-like organization to explain it to them.

Here’s a thought - tell employees who work together and depend on each other that, now that they’ve shrunken ‘transaction processing’ time, it is time to shrink the cycle time of what happens between the transactions by half. Make the company's future (and their continued employment) dependent on succeeding. Then tell them that there are some web 2.0 tools out there they can use if it will help - they’ll figure out the rest without chugging some Consultant's Koolaid.

It kills me how lame company management has become these days and how willing these companies are to buy the smoke and mirrors that the McKinseys of the world are selling instead of simply giving some clear goals to be achieved by employees, some incentive to succeed, some reasonable consequences if not successful, and a few simple tools to make the job easier.

We’ve become a culture of sheep.

Note – I actually posted most of this as a comment on another site that was referencing the Woods post. I was just so frustrated when I first read it that I commented on that site before thinking 'hey, wait a minute… I have a blog. Maybe I should start writing there again'.  And so I will.

Can't tell the Preachers from the Choir

The tech players on the west coast have conferences, summits, and other events  (here, here, and many others) where everyone in attendance knows about wikis and other web 2.0 tools, is excited about it, and can't wait to talk to and about other people who are excited by it.

Where? The West coast, of course.

Here's a thought - why not have a conference with these luminaries in a place that has possibly heard about web 2.0 but still doesn't have a clue? Places like Atlanta, Charlotte, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Houston, Chicago or (God help me) Cincinnati?

Maybe you'd start generating some buzz amongst some business types that could really use the stuff for productive, profitable purposes.

Grow a spine and just do it

The biggest obstacle for wikis is still adoption and the two biggest components of that are email (which makes it easy NOT to do wikis) and basic human nature (a reluctance to change, take the steps, mandate it, and make it successful).

You are a manager, supervisor, or other kind of leader of a group or function that collaboratively works on numerous tasks and requirements. Failure to deliver is ultimately your responsibility. You and your people get it done, but you live on email, attachments, things falling through the cracks, and the occasional irate customer. It's not seamless, it's not productive, and it's not fun.

You've heard all the claims about ease of use and the benefits of adopting wikis, but it isn’t going to happen in your company, is it? Here is a simple step-by-step process for making your life easier, your people happier, and your efforts more productive (Warning – this has an edgy, ‘no-nonsense' tone to it).

• Select a wiki product. If you are just starting out and you fear the likely outcome of 'requesting' your company to provide a wiki solution, then you have 3 choices each of which assumes you are going to just do it and beg forgiveness later (when you will be proving how beneficial it is to the organization!):

1. Have someone in IT that you know is already using a wiki solution internally set you up with a private space; or

2. Select a hosted solution that will cost you $5/month for as many people as you want to access it (pay for it out of pocket and skip lunch once a month if you have to). PBwiki offers a single password for any member to use; Wikispaces offers a unique ID/password for each member; OR

3. Have a technical developer type you trust download some freeware onto a web accessible server (offsite or behind your company's firewall).

Granted, this approach MAY imply a conflict with some company policies, but you know what happens when you ask first. Just do it and beg forgiveness later. Of course, use common sense - it's not worth getting fired over.

• Organize how you will use it. Play around with it first and get some pointers from someone who is familiar with the particular product you selected. There are lots of ways to organize a wiki, but here is the simplest – The Home Page is just a chronological listing (or any other order you feel comfortable with) of each new task or requirement that comes along. Each item in that listing is actually a page link to a separate Page where the person or team will do the work – all the communications that are normally done in email and any deliverable that comes out of the process.

• Use a simple process. On each new page (requirement) state what needs to be done (the same way you would in an email). List the names of who is responsible. Those people use that page to provide updates, questions, ideas, solutions, tasks completed. On the Home Page, someone can periodically update the status of the various line items.

• Mandate its use by your people. No, you’re not going to ‘try’ something new. You need to explain the layout, how you will be creating pages on the wiki the way you ‘used to create emails’, how your people will communicate on each wiki page instead of email, and how each page will, in effect, be the complete audit trail of whatever was done to work and complete that requirement. Stray emails relevant to any particular task need to be steered back into the wiki with a reminder to senders or receivers (e.g., “Great question/suggestion – see the wiki for the answer.”). Yes, the tone and approach you use with you folks will depend on the culture and personalities of the group – maintain a firm but gentle approach however in requiring its use.

• Constantly review and keep the content current. Now, instead of hammering people with voicemails and emails, you can quickly go through every task and see what has been done, any issues, and leave your own comments/suggestions. Keep the Page links on the Home Page current, but don’t DELETE any links of completed tasks or projects. Cut and paste the Page Links from the Home Page to an Archive Page. You want to keep these links and pages because they are the complete audit trail of everything done for any task your group does. Modify the approach and Page formats as people get used to it and improvement opportunities present themselves.

• Track some basic measures that prove you did the right thing. If you do it right, you either will never have to write another status report OR creating status reports will be a heck of a lot easier. Emails should be reduced substantially. Task and project quality should improve significantly. Cycle times will be reduced. And, perhaps most importantly, you and your people will have a better sense of what is happening, be more relaxed, and generally nicer to work with.

Be positive and flexible. You won’t get it perfect the first time, but you’ll never have to start over. This approach allows you to adapt, improve, act on suggestions, and get everyone to contribute. But you may have to be something of a ‘bad guy’ at first.

Still see obstacles?

Here’s the most likely one – you are just stretched too thin to take the time to start something (easy as it is) that would ultimately get more work done better in a faster time frame with the staff you already have. Catch-22.

Contact me. This is what I do.

And if you are an Executive or decision maker that is feeling the pinch of eroding productivity, how about cutting some slack for your people and just let them do this?

The Margin is in the Mystery

That title is a well-known saying in the consulting world. It refers to the understanding that most business challenges have solutions implemented for which none of the parties involved (client, technology provider, and/or service provider) really know why it will work but there is this desire to believe it will work. Service providers rely on this blind faith to justify their fees and margins. Of course, this isn't true of all such providers, but it is prevalent enough to taint all of them.

Many business leaders, politicians, religious leaders, and other professionals have a large stake based on this kind of perception. Their value is a function of dealing with the unknown for their constituents who have an implicit faith that these providers know what the are doing and talking about. If there is anything that threatens that value stake for those providers, they will typically take a stand against it whether they really believe it (or even understand it) or not.

Clarity, simplicity, and truth are anathma to folks like this.

Wikis provide a forum for both public and private discourse that potentially cuts to the chase, eliminates falsehoods, and provides a clear path to whatever destination a particular group's reason for being is. Now, that assumes of course that the group actually wants a clear, simple path to some legitimate purpose, goal, or destination and isn't promoting their own self-serving agenda (yeah, I know, what group doesn't do that?). Institutional leadership sees this as a threat.

What prompted me to write this actually has nothing to do with wikis. The controversy over the fictional 'Da Vinci Code' movie has gotten my attention. There are religious leaders who acknowledge they will see it and don't take it too seriously. I am struck, however, by the anger exhibited by many other religious leaders who are calling for boycotts and picketing various venues.

I wonder how adamant they really are or are they just taking the opportunity to shine the light on themselves, shore up the beliefs of their flocks, and maintain the 'mystery'?

Look at litigation reform, campaign reform, tax reform, immigration reform, SEC reforms and consider the value stakes the various parties have on both sides of any issue. More often than not they are more concerned about their personal loss of value than they are for the benefits their constituents might receive.

The Web 2.0 phenomenon (well the hype is more of a phenomenon right now than the actual application and use) could be thought of as a reform. Unfortunately, it is being usurped by the major tech players because business leaders, reluctant to lose their 'mystery' by unleashing open discourse in the enterprise, have not embraced the relatively inexpensive approach to adoption and will, instead, end up having it shoved down their throats by their 'trusted' tech vendors and implementation service providers.

Brilliant.

Productivity Gains Will Be In NON-Transactional Business Areas

Productivity improvements were had in the 80’s and 90’s primarily on the shop floor, sales processes, and accounting areas. The principle drivers for this were enterprise systems that connected end-to-end’ transactions, eliminated (or at least reduced) redundant data, and allowed access to more transactional data by more people with a need to know.

SCM, CRM, and ERP implementations have been fairly well stabilized across many industries and incremental improvements in those arenas are demonstrating diminishing rates of return. This could be an explanation for the flat or declining productivity of late cited in Business 2.0:

…productivity -- a measure of the amount of work done by each employee -- actually declined in the last quarter of 2005 and is expected to post its worst showing in almost a decade this year.

Strip away the economic wonkery, and the upshot is clear: Bosses can't squeeze more work out of existing workers, and there aren't many new workers, particularly skilled ones, out there.

I mentioned this in a previous post, but I feel it is worth focusing on. Anyone involved in corporate projects, tasks, and workflows will agree that most business activity revolves not around the production and sale of products and services but around all the exceptions that occur outside of the supply chain (SCM), sales process (CRM), and accounting of transactions (ERP).

Look around the average corporate department and functional area and you realize that everything is an exception and there is no infrastructure to facilitate more timely resolution of those non-transactional activities - negotiations, proposals, research, issues, changes, audits, compliance, projects, etc, etc, etc. It is all desktop document and email-based communications.

The corporate arena has not seen a real improvement in productivity over the last 10-15 years – frankly, since the PC became established in the corporate environment. The advent of desktop apps and email was a huge productivity gain for the time, but nothing has changed in the interim. Sure, efforts with Lotus Notes and other CMS solutions offered the promise of continued productivity gains, but that neither happened nor has it ever been measured – at least not to my knowledge.

The reason for this is the data and transaction-centric nature of enterprise systems. Assuming things go according to plan, enterprise data processing is a seamless, painless act as simple as breathing. It is the exceptions, however, that cause the pain of collaboration for which there are still no solutions other than email, desktop apps, and klugy CMS installations.

Any company looking to make a serious leap in productivity gains in the corporate environment has no other choice than taking a serious, proactive effort at promoting the use of wikis in those environments.

That is if those companies really do want more action, better quality, and faster results.

I Wanna A New Drug

I was just thinking about the lack of compelling, interesting, motivational content of late in the blogosphere when I came across Ross Mayfield's most recent post - "WoW 60". WoW is the acronym for World of Warcraft, the online game that is replacing golf (the real kind) as the social interaction of the future. Ross' first statement may explain a lot:

Last night my character on World of Warcraft (a Paladin called Kalevipoeg), reached level 60 -- the highest in the game.  So far, it's a "research" project gone awry, and something that explains why blogging dropped off over the last six months.

Just how much of the population is getting sucked up into this thing? Are other bloggers trading in their creative writing juices for the joy of Warcraft? Will we start seeing a drop in voters at the polls? Will MSM reporters lose their subjective edge? Will talk show hosts be talking to themselves?

Will the birth rate start falling?

Ross concludes the piece with:

I still have issues with WoW's disconnection with real life, failure to augment it, let alone provide incentives to live it better.  I believe it provides good simulation-based training, have made connections there as happens with all social software, but it still comes at a cost great enough that I am unsure of it's return.

Ah, hell, it beats TV.

Yeah, and maybe a lot of other stuff.

Really Stupid Branding

I realize most terminology in the tech arena is either coined down in the developer trenches as code is born or in the minds of marketers and VCs as they try to capture the essence of what a product is, but I am bothered by the degree to which adoption of Web 2.0 tools is impeded by the very names attached to these technologies.

'Social Networking', 'blogs', 'wikis', 'tagging', and all those other terms are clearly understood and bandied about by about 2% of the population. The other 98% of the population may have heard the terms, but they have no clue what it means or how they can take advantage of it. And they don't care.

This is the population I talk to on a regular basis. It is the population that could be using this stuff yesterday, but will avoid it like the plague. When they hear it, it resonates the way your arm does when you hit your funny bone. I'm no branding expert, but isn't this a problem?

Had it not been for Lotus Notes, the perfect term to be using instead of 'Social Networking' would be 'groupware'. That's what it is. But no, a perfectly good branding term like groupware now has a negative connotation because of the painful experience of many of the products associated with it. Now we have some really cool, simple, cheap, effective products that really DO facilitate group activities, but the de facto branding is scaring people off.

Marketing this terminology through multiple media channels to the mass market isn't going to help either. The '98 percenters' gloss over it. They aren't interested in understanding it if it has a stupid name.

Names are everything and if Web 2.0  fizzles, which may happen in spite of the persistent chatter and reporting around it, I would lay the blame at the feet of the people who came up with really stupid names for really solid products.

For the record, I have embraced social networking, blogs, wikis, and tagging - I am staking a lot on it. But I hate the names.

More 'Wiki v Email'

After yesterday's post, I came across this post on Central Desktop's blog. Now, Central Desktop IS a collaboration software vendor that I don't know much about, but their analysis of why email is so pervasive is pretty insightful....

Email as a collaboration tool sucks. Everyone knows this. Everyone says it. Everyone writes about it. And everyone agrees that its inefficient, it’s chaotic, its silo’ed and its full of spam. Yet, in spite of these shortcomings, we can assume with confidence that email is still the preferred method of ‘collaborating’ and sharing information with others.

In short, why do we love our email?

They expand on the following topics in a "quick summation of what we believe is Good about Email".

Email is Easy To Understand
Email is Universal
Email is Accessible from Anywhere
Email Can Be Personalized
Email is Manageable/Configurable
Email is Searchable
Email is In Your Face
Email Just Works

My take? Email works because our home ISPs automatically give us one and we automatically set up every employee at work with an email account and expect them to use it. Email will stop being so pervasive when we also automatically set up collaborative spaces for every "group" that needs to "accomplish" something and expect them to use it with equal mandate.

Naturally, my take on 'setting up groups' is the wiki. As of this posting, there were 29 comments on the Central Desktop post - pretty decent response, mostly tech types, and a few references to wikis.

Wiki IS email – for groups!

I have this really clear vision of where this is all going and it is the only reason I keep plugging away at this chore (blogging). And it is a chore, but hopefully, a productive one.

Someday, in the not too distant future, the only reason I’ll be getting an email, will be to notify me of changes within any of the groups I belong to – specifically, updates to the many group wikis I will belong to.

Someday, everything I do will have a wiki associated with it and everyone involved in any of the wikis I’m involved in will communicate with everyone else in that group through the wiki.

Group wikis will be as ubiquitous as email – and a lot more manageable.

Aside from the few personal entertainments and interests we all have (music, news, hobbies, etc) that IM and email facilitate, pretty much everything else we do is in the context of groups. Projects, associations, volunteer work, social, business, classes, civic involvement, events – you name it, they all rely on, generate, and respond to information that is relevant to everyone in that group.

Someday, in my fantasy world, each of those groups I participate in (and each individual project within each of those groups) will have its own wiki workspace.

Everything these groups do now is communicated within the group through email, IM, and voice. Virtually all of it is received and responded to, but all of it is lost (or at least inaccessible) because there is no context for the information to be captured in a common forum so everyone with a vested interest in that information can see it, react, and update.

Someday, when I’m interested in joining a new group, assigned a project, or invited to participate in something, I’ll say, “Great, what’s the wiki and password?” Today, we exchange email addresses, cell phone numbers, IM names, and skype accounts and proceed to clutter each of them up. Arrrgh.

Someday, when I scroll through my PDA, Treo, iPod, or whatever new device is hot that week (could be my toaster for all I know), I won’t be looking at my email – I’ll be scrolling my wiki groups sorted hierarchically, by priority, or most recent updates. I’ll be able to click through in a simple manner to see what changes occurred and have it in the context of all the other information relative to that group or project I’m involved with.

If I need to, I’ll respond with my comments or simply note the fact that I saw it – for all the rest of the group to see without sending out another wave of emails – or worse, an individual email that will be missed by someone else who really needs the same information.

Will email, voicemail, IM, and number of other tools just go away? Probably not. But their use will be much more manageable, personal, and enjoyable than they are today with so many other things cluttering them up.

Today, when someone speculates on how to get information or a document to us, we say something like “Dude, just email it to me”. Or, they just email it whether we want it or not.

Someday, it may seem strange to get an email.

Someday, we’ll say to the email sender, “Dude, next time, just stick it in the wiki.”

Go Figure

I've not been posting recently and I apologize to those of you out there who hang on my every word (heh, heh).

When I started this blog, I was really diligent about getting a post out there at least every other day. I was actually averaging 1/day for a while. I wasn't really sure about the business model yet, but I knew I had to get my opinion out there. Recently, I've been thinking more and more about that business model which can soak up more time than I have.

Another dilemma I've had is hitting that 'Wall'. Apparently the 'wall' is a phenomenon that happens to bloggers (and maybe writers in general). There is still plenty to write about, but you begin to question whether or not you are reaching anyone. The motivation tends to go out of your sails.

And then something funny happened. I actually got a couple solicitations from a few parties interested in what I write about.

"Would I be interested in helping them?"

I'm not sure where it will lead, but it is definitely invogorating to get unsolicited requests and then see something actually happen. And, in the process of prepping for actual engagements, all sorts of new ideas for posts become apparent.

Anyone who doubts the marketing potential of blogs should really give it another look. It's a lot more effective than static websites, brochureware, email campaigns, and newsletters. I'm looking forward to getting back in a groove again.