I am attending ASAE's Technology Conference today and tomorrow and had the opportunity to hear Anthony Williams, coauthor of Wikinomics. I thought one of the ideas that was presented was particularly interesting - the idea of using a wiki to design corporate strategy.
Think about it... strategic planning is usually left up to senior staff. And that's probably for a few reasonable (though not great) reasons - the time to integrate everyone's opinion can be prohibitive, and in some cases, maybe the senior staff have an insider's view into the industry (and the correlating connections) that enables them to more quickly assess the needs of the organization and industry. You could come up with a host of reasons.
Using a wiki to develop strategy would allow you to engage the minds of staff who are engaged and enthusiastic about the mission of the organization to have a hand in the direction of the organization. Using a wiki would allow you to diversify the voices that are influencing the direction of the organization. Using a wiki... you would never stop - your strategy could continuously evolve.
I love, love, love this idea.
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2 comments:
Kristi, allow me to propose a slight change to your equation.
wikis + strategy=good idea
Using wikis to support broadly distributed collaboration on strategy is an excellent approach. The premise of strategic planning, however, is that the core group must maintain its control, a way of thinking that is a complete mismatch with use of wikis.
This is not a question of semantics. Strategic planning is a waste of our time. Strategy is essential to our success. Wikis can help us engage in the latter work, but they cannot save the former from its internal flaws.
Jeff - Thanks. I'm totally down with that. And I know. (See, it takes a while to break old habits!)
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