Wiki Patterns

What is it?

In an organization everybody has something to teach and everybody has something to learn. It is important to identify your subject experts and to help them disseminate their knowledge while permitting other people in the organization to capture that information (and the context around the information) so it is easily available.  As Dave Snowden has written even if an expert wants to write a book it will take him or her a year. If s/he wants to write an article it will take a couple of months. But when they tell the story of how they acquired or use their tacit knowledge it can only take fifteen minutes or an hour.

Usage

Identify a problem or "painpoint" that is common all over the company. Then identify an expert who has already put in place a good solution to this "painpoint in his or her part of the organisation. Ask the expert if s/he is willing to share his or her tacit knowledge. Then set up an online session with video-conference, Skype or Webex in which 5 or 6 people who want to learn from the expert's knowledge will listen and question. All people listening should be advised that they will be expected to act as "Scribes" (I got this terminology from Olivier Beau, who is the managing director of a company in France that manages Hazardous Chemical Waste and which has recently implemented a Wiki). After the session all scribes create a common page or space on the wiki dedicated to the knowledge that has been transmitted, adding to or correcting the page/space based on what they understand from the "Master". The "Master" then puts the finishing touches to the page and in the process can learn more about his or her own practice. Every time the social network of an organisation identifies a person in any domain he or she should be invited to go through the same process of "storytelling" followed up by what s/he has imparted being transformed into practical information or a best practice on the wiki.

Example

At Labo-Services in France, the company of which Olivier is the MD, a short workshop was held in which the participants were asked to list on separate post-its all the best practices they knew of in the company, either documented or undocumented. Each of these best practices then became not only a subject for a wiki page but also part of a questionnnaire. The questionnaire was then used on each one of the company's 31 sites spread throughout France to ask peers (not managers) who were the best exponents of these best practices and this allowed them also to find out which people were the most suitable for benchmarking. The people thus identified were then the people invited to share their knowledge via Webex and have it written up by the "scribes" on the wiki. If the online tool you are using allows you to record the master class visually or make a podcast this can be attached to the page.

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Related Patterns

• Recognition - Knowledge workers get their satisfaction from having their expertise recognized by their peers.

• AcknowledgeGoodness - By showing where the expertise lies in a company