I love the idea of staff collaborating, sharing ideas and knowledge, and assisting each other to find new and better ways of supporting our customers.
The knowledge and experience of the team, far out weighs the knowledge and experience of any one individual within the team.
Given that, late last year I thought it would be a good idea to implement a wiki for my team. I must admit, at the time I was not sure how we would define the value of the wiki, nor how we would know if its use was a success, however it seemed obvious for some reason that this is what we should do. On a side note, read Malcolm Gladwell Blink: the power of thinking without thinking, you will get a better feel for why you should "follow your gut" sometimes.
I also was not sure how the use of the wiki would fit in with the use of Email, instant messages, meetings, etc. What communication would happen where? We jumped in with both feet despite the unknowns, as the only way we would learn was by giving it a go.
Over the next few posts I will go over some of our learning's from our great wiki experiment, in the interest of sharing what we have learnt, but first some quick background information -
- I have a team geographically dispersed around Australia, with the corporate office based in Melbourne.
- Support desk services are based in Melbourne, with business consultants in other Australian capital cities, and, generally out with customers in their offices.
- We need to work in the multiple time zones Australia has to offer
- Staff need to get access to information from all the locations they work, corporate office, customer office, home, and sometimes while mobile.
- Different staff have different skills and experience that I wanted to be able to tap into and leverage across the rest of the team.
Next up, Wes's 5 steps to wiki heaven!
