For those (5) of you keeping score at home, I feel it necessary to inform you of a recent mark in the W column for the half tactless (me), half talented (Jay), full-tilt team of trans-national transparency here at E2oh. Fire up your boombox and rifle rack because ladies and gents, rising like a $12,000 enterprise-wide, web-based phoenix from the ashes of acquisition, the Wiki is back!
Needless to say, I am stoked. After 3 months of a painful regression through file uploads, track changes, and hourly knowledge assassinations from email, I could not be happier to again, author content in Confluence. I mean really though…how do people do it? I haven’t been removed from that world for decades but Jesus Murphy…I almost missed my handball game with Gordon due to the total time suck of outdated and inefficient tools and methods.
So…I have been a thinkin’. Thinkin ’bout 2.0 and what not. Know how people say ‘If I had to do it all over again…”, and then ramble off a litany of mistakes from their latest project? (Or complete life in my case). Sometimes they even go so far as to turn these pricey little gems of consulting pontification into deliverables we call “Lessons Learned”. Strangely, for as introspective and growth-oriented as this process appears, I always get the sense no one actually “learns the lessons”. They are more just an embarrassing admission of failure recurrence when “learned” again on the next project.
So with that, I figured I would put down on paper (monitor?) a few lessons we learned from our multiple 2.0 implementations over the years. We are essentially starting over in the adoption marathon at our new company, and maybe, just maybe we won’t have to learn these lessons again.
- Lesson 1 – Completely disregard anything said by anyone referring to themselves as a social media expert, selling only a social media strategy, or claiming that it’s not about the technology. The real “experts” out there are the employees with their heads down, screaming like a banshee for a better way to work. They don’t need a strategy. They need permission and a tool that will enable them to serve as a vanguard for the organizationally elite . They will guide the rest of the herd, knowingly or not. And don’t call them early adopters. Call everyone else late.
- Lesson 2 – Realize you probably know way less about “how your organization works” than you think. “Culture” can be a tricky devil in the world of limited choice. Maybe your organization hoards information because they have never been given an option otherwise. Don’t presuppose any of the actions of the crowd. Go into projects with a focus on flexibility and agile adaptation to the movements of the masses. This is social software after all, and I know I am not nearly smart enough to accurately predict anything a society might do.
- Lesson 3 – Convince yourself you are never informed enough to always be right. You are only informed enough to sometimes be present. If you ask more questions than you answer, you reduce the risk of looking like a complete knucklehead and increase your chances of getting a second date. Wait…that’s not a lesson I learned at work…definitely learned that in Adams Morgan. Seems to sort of work both places though.
- Lesson 4 – Start a blog and make fun of yourself for being a 2.0 zealot. I mean…we are kind of nutty, right? And just like Dairy Queen, everyone loves a little substance dipped in crunchy self deprecation.
I can say with absolute certainty that I have committed the mistakes driving these “lessons” dozens of times. Hell, I might be committing one of them by writing this post. As we move ahead with Wiki Part Deux, we’ll keep the scoreboard updated on how we are doing. Put on your rally caps though, because if my writing is any indication of my ability, I am coming from down a ton and need all the help I can get.
17 responses so far ↓
1 Justin Hayes // Aug 24, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Good stuff here Nate. There are absolutely obstacles remaining though, as i know that there is still tool uncertainty (term borrowed from KRK) out there that makes strategic investment decisions difficult. It will be interesting to see what happens with the Federal practice and the wiki.
Further, is there an eventual convergence plan, or is it likely to remain that there are multiple platforms within the organization. Will a restriction on the growth of the wiki remain?
What can we do to help fight the good fight? What is the “Confluence Adoption Strategy” at our new home, and how can we circle the wagons. Note: link to wiki page might be a good thing to develop said strategy.
2 Sean Lew // Aug 24, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Good work Nate!
3 Steven Walling // Aug 25, 2009 at 12:56 am
/me subscribes.
4 Nate Nash // Aug 25, 2009 at 10:40 am
Sweet! We are rapidly approaching the teens in terms of subscribers!
5 Nate Nash // Aug 25, 2009 at 10:40 am
Thanks Sean. It’s like 2007 all over again.
6 Nate Nash // Aug 25, 2009 at 10:51 am
@Justin – On convergence, I am not really sure. I would like to see it, but guess it will be slowly rolled out decision.
On adoption – I don’t think our adoption approach is any different than it was before. Be an example of a wiki worker and push virally out to everyone you know. I tend to shy away from overly organized attempts to wikify people because it loses some of the legitimacy that only comes from personal interactions. Not to say personal interactions can’t be scaled by things like internal blogging, but anything too “corporate” tends to die on the vine.
As long as we keep up the frankly difficult role of refusing to work via stone age tactics, I am confident it will spread.
7 Justin Hayes // Aug 25, 2009 at 11:08 am
@Nate – with restrictions on adding users, viral expansion (which i agree is the best adoption method) is hindered. Hopefully in time the apparent fear of confluence dominance will subside? Of course, perhaps there is good reason to fear that…
8 Jay Hariani // Aug 25, 2009 at 11:20 am
Relinquishing control and letting your organization decide how they want to create and use information – truly the zen of wiki. As you point out, this means that some people need to swallow their pride a bit. I think that’s the hard part.
9 Lessons From Inside the Firewall: Adoption, Tools & Culture // Aug 25, 2009 at 1:32 pm
[...] settled from the Deloitte acquisition of BearingPoint earlier this year, Nate Nash writes that the enterprise wiki project he and Jay Hariani started at BearingPoint will continue under the Deloitte umbrella: After 3 [...]
10 Twitter Trackbacks for Back in Blue [e2oh.com] on Topsy.com // Aug 25, 2009 at 2:06 pm
[...] Back in Blue http://www.e2oh.com/2009/08/24/back-in-blue – view page – cached #e2.oh RSS Feed e2.oh » Back in Blue Comments Feed e2.oh Welcome Free Your Cloud – Make Cloud Computing Work in Government — From the page [...]
11 Steve Lunceford // Aug 26, 2009 at 9:30 am
Hey Jay, speaking of being nimble and letting employees guide the herd for easy-to-use tools, how ’bout we spin up collaborative discussion tools like vbulletin or phbb vs confluence?
12 Nate Nash // Aug 28, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Hey Steve…we think the forum macros, provided by the Community Bubbles Plugin from our friends at Adaptavist pretty much addresses the discussion forum capability. For a demo, log in to the wiki and search for the Clearinghouse.
13 Parting Shots // Aug 28, 2009 at 5:31 pm
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14 stoked wiki | Random Hot News // Sep 6, 2009 at 7:37 pm
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15 PI // Oct 5, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Hey Steve…we think the <a href=”https://www.adaptavist.com/display/Bubbles/Forums” rel=”nofollow”>forum macros</a>, provided by the <a href=”https://www.adaptavist.com/display/Bubbles/Home” rel=”nofollow”>Community Bubbles Plugin</a> from our friends at <a href=”https://www.adaptavist.com/display/ADAPTAVIST/Home” rel=”nofollow”>Adaptavist</a> pretty much addresses the discussion forum capability. For a demo, log in to the wiki and search for the Clearinghouse.
16 Now, With More Hard! // Oct 14, 2009 at 6:40 pm
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17 Different Strokes // Jan 27, 2010 at 5:24 pm
[...] I promised some time ago that I would keep you posted on the score with respect to Wiki Part Deux (Electric Boogaloo) . In short – so far, so good. Adoption, usage, and pervasiveness continue to steadily grow [...]
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