You're getting on my wiki!

Ok, so I think I established from my last blog, Born again digital, that I’m more technosavvy than I thought. I also established that I watch too much reality TV – but that’s a different story (Claire to win The Apprentice in the UK by the way).

So, my digidiary last week definitely opened my eyes. Yes, I am, and I believe we are, indeed living in a digital world and it’s time to get real in the workplace. My mission now is to work out how to do that making sure it’s timely, appropriate, feasible etc etc. Thankfully, I’m not alone as my business has a good bunch of fellow social media nuts/amateurs/virgins who are chomping at the bit to give it a go.

On my social network, I’ve started to get some really useful input on how to do this. In particular, Jon Ingham got in touch about his take on social business and how to Rehumanise the workplace. And, I think he’s spot on – it is about being human – inside and outside of the workplace. Being who you are when you walk through your office door – the same person as you were when you left home that morning.

So, yes, where’s the harm in talking to your workmates about your dog, what you watched on tv last night, where you’ve been on hols etc? Being more human at work – surely that’ll build better relationships and trust?

There’s a great example happening in my workplace right now actually. Historically, there’s been an issue of trusting the leadership team – well, a few months ago, our senior team started blogging. And, boy, what an amazing response it’s been. There’s a couple of our senior bloggers who now have a huge following and word spreads like wildfire whenever they blog – our very own pied pipers of the blogosphere! We’ve even got a petition to create t-shirts and badges to state that you are indeed one of their fan club. Now, you may think that’s gone a bit far – BUT, my work has around 20,000 employees scattered across the country in over 100 sites. Before, not many people knew who those senior guys were – now they’ve got celebrity status. AND, trust in the leadership has increased (evidence through polls before and after). The clout that these guys have when implementing change, gaining buy in etc etc has increased massively – just by being really human in their blogs. Incidentally, this gang are also twittering! Anyway, I could go on for ages about that one but think I’ll move on to the purpose of this blog.

So, my quest is to bring the digital world from the outside in – communicating with people how you do on the outside internally in the workplace. Making things two-way, interactive and collaborative – while keeping it human of course. For this blog, I’m going to tackle wikis.

My understanding of a wiki is a user generated definition of something. It’s defined by a person and then collaboratively worked on by a community of people to get the definition right. It’s not moderated centrally, but rather by the community of people contributing to the wiki. Sound like gobbledegook? Hmm, maybe a bit.

Well, I have to say I go to Wikipedia all the time. If ever I need to know what something means, I go to Wikipedia. Ok, you can never guarantee it’s 100% accurate, but, what you do know is that the definition has been generated by a group of people genuinely interested in that subject matter, and they’ve been collaborating to get it right.

So, in the workplace – surely something great to do right? Help breakdown the barriers of technobabble to get a human and agreed interpretation of something.

We’ve not yet tried wikis but it’s on our list. I’d love to hear more from anyone who’s tried this successfully – or unsuccessfully for that matter.

Looking forward to hearing from you.
Abi

PS. Blogs and wikis were unrecognised by my spell check – what does that tell you?!

Comments

[Sarah Perry]

Hi Abi,

We are working with the Virgin mobile team who use the Snap Comms tools to communicate with retail stores. We've just lauched our interactive channel (for employee comms)and would love it if you would like to evaluate it.

If you'd like to get in touch, please drop me an email (my address should be visible to you as moderator I think).

[Mark Schenk]

Hi Abi,

The effect of blogging by the leaders is a great story. From your description, some of the key factors contributing to this seem to be a)blogging shows they are prepared to do things differently b)the content of their blogs shows their humanity (and people feel they know them better as a result) and c)blogging sets the example about the openness of communication.

I would love to hear more about how this is working.