Wikis are the pink tasting spoon for enterprise social software
A couple of years ago, wikis were all the rage. They were extremely cheap (or free), easy to implement, and a completely unstructured blank canvas. Assuming you were a developer or IT person, you could design and populate your own “department website” in seconds. And thats exactly what happened. The techies pounced all over wikis and built a ton of stuff really fast. They loved the shorthand markup. They loved how easy it was to edit off the same page. It became religious. Time to take notes? Put it in the wiki. Need to build an employee directory? A wiki can do that! Need an answer? Duh, have you checked the wiki?! Techies became wiki apostles. For the first time in eons, they tried to get the rest of us to use the same software they were using. That’s why wikis are perhaps the fastest-growth software that enterprises have ever seen besides email.
And the fastest declining.
Wikis have sprung up across enterprises like body hair on Robin Williams. They’re a mess. A rat’s nest of pages, links, and installations have turned wikis into a disease that companies need to cure. Enterprise adoption-wise, wikis have plateaued and remain guarded by techie teams. Our sales pipeline is stuffed with companies trying to wrangle these goats. A major telecom told me they have over 350 “out-of-control wikis.” And based on headhunter calls I’ve received in the last few months, at least three wiki-centric companies are looking for new CEOs to come save the day. Ironically, it’s now developers and IT on the defensive about their software while the business people push for something that makes sense for the whole company.
Before you think I’m slamming wikis, you should know I heavily support them. They are a critical, ongoing part of the social software movement and still very powerful tools for certain use-cases. The idea behind wikis is powerful and the technology itself can be instrumental. Standalone wikis may be going away as the conceptual framework for enterprise-wide collaboration, but they’re great for small teams or potentially as software underpinnings. And the best news is that the wiki explosion has created a tremendous appetite and re-examination for new collaboration software. Wikis have been the pink Baskin Robbin’s tasting spoon to get this started. And for once, IT isn’t standing in the way–they’ve been downing Rocky Road for a while now. Perhaps it’s also the thing that helps transform the IT department into a more consultative role. We’ll see.
Things people have said about this post
This is interesting.
I’m in the training and development field, for the most part, and it’s often a struggle to get companies to adopt even a wiki. I’m giving a presentation at a conference next week on how to use a wiki.
So while you, and I, think things like blogs and wikis are rather old news, in some fields, they’re not. I’m always amazed that Web 2.0 is such a “scary” and “new” topic when I go to these conferences. But at least they’re interested - my last session on Blogs was packed.
The problems I’ve seen with wikis in my field is the lack of use. We have just enough “Silver Gen” folks in the T&D that there is a definite fear of use, fear of anything new. I suspect that will change as more “Next Gen” learners enter the T&D field. At least, I hope it will.
Right now I rather feel like T&D is always around 5 years behind the rest of “the Internets.”
Sam,
I agree, wikis are out of control. At my last job we had over 15 wikis for a group of 200 people - and we didn’t have an enterprise search capability either which meant it was hard to find stuff.
What are you proposing as an alternative (and I bet I know the answer)?
That is an awesome title and illustration. And it’s so true.
@Michelle- For sure, there are a ton of companies that haven’t yet even taken the social software plunge. Once the interest is there, the big thing we see is that a lot of companies have a short-range view or complete lack of vision. Some probably buy and don’t know why. I overgeneralize opportunities into (a) they need and point tool and that’s good enough for a while (b) they want the option for something to grow with them; and (c) they’re looking for something–even if it starts as a test–that could serve the whole company. The best thing we can do is continue to educate and be crisp in the value and strategic approaces. Getting folks a to sample the flavor is the first major hurdle.
@Jeremy- I think I may have answered part of this in the above paragraph. The first solution is to know what you’re solving for. Have a vision (even if it will change), a plan (make sure it’s represents the needs of the users), and shop lots of options. Test and invest. Then go big. Always.
There will be lot of products that will have to address the cacophony of social software repositories by offering windows to them (Intranet 2.0) or vacuuming their content and centralizing it into something that doesn’t feel like the mothership trying to enact control. The truth is, there’s a lot of people who are perfectly happy using their wiki. It’s typically management who knows it’s a big problem.
This is a good article, too: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ten_common_objections_to_socia.php
One of the quotes is telling on this subject:
“I definitely have experienced some of the challenges here at my day job in ecomm at Bank of America. One of the challenges that I don’t know how to deal with, and which isn’t really talked about here, is: How to cope when the concepts of collaboration and social tools are fully supported, yet the tools that are adopted end up hampering all of the benefits of Social Media?
I did lots of different things, from “leading” workgroups dedicated to finding the best matched tools and strategies to our needs, to using tools in a guerrilla fashion. Ultimately, I was shot down when the workgroup’s recommendations were overridden by “enterprise initiatives” that were similarly tasked and when a series of engagements with corporate lawyers left me shuddering and questioning my existence.
One of the things I have noticed is that for many people, installing their own Confluence wiki and using some hacked together internal tool is just fine in these types of environments. From and enterprise perspective, that just ensures more siloed data and less collaboration.
It goes without saying that this has a really negative effect on ROI for the business. When after months of usage a tool used by associates to collaborate gets shut down (taking with it all the collective knowledge, connections and functionality) it hits associate morale and productivity pretty hard as well.”
I’m not convinced that the tool makes the difference. Sure, hiding cryptic text markup from users is always a good idea for promoting adoption, but if people aren’t encouraged to collaborate, especially across organizational or departmental boundaries, real opportunities for benefits to arise from collaboration will get lost.
Wow, this is a pretty strong rant but it’s missing any helpful advice on how to start and grow a wiki successfully. I think this is not something that’s particular to wikis; any enterprise software tool needs a common sense, guided approach or it can run a little wild.
I’d encourage anyone looking for guidance to visit http://www.wikipatterns.com, and Blog on Wiki Patterns: http://www.ikiw.org. On the blog, be sure to check out 21 Days of Wiki Adoption, a series of 1-2 minutes clips with the most important tips for wiki adoption: http://www.ikiw.org/21days
Wikis ARE out of control (in large enterprise)!
My take and experience in large enterprise environments is they failed to sponsor wikis that were overarching and available as a collaboration tool (mainly due to the lack of interest in openness) and subsequently, this led to rogue wikis popping up, created for every group who felt the need to have one. It can be quite an eye-opener when you realize some tech companies are not that technical after all and I believe it’s due to the culture of me vs we = fear.
Ultimately, this is the reason IT is on board to get rid of them. One of the issues around collaboration is “public vs private” (groups asking for communities, yet only wanting to allow for those in their group to participate) particularly in companies who have a silo culture. People request “private” communities claiming they don’t want others in the organization or in the eco-system if that is a factor, lurking or participating in their conversations…this is an adoption problem, not a technical problem.
In offering new options for social media tools, perhaps the future use of a wiki,
is for groups who have a valid reason to be private (a necessity in larger enterprise, unfortunately) and access granted to the wiki via SSL or other granted rights to the proprietary information being generated in the wiki.
In the meantime, communities are kept open, while a culture learns and embraces the idea of collaboration and social media adoption. Allowing all to blog , lurk and participate in discussion boards, etc.
@Michelle–I completely agree with your comment about folks not having any idea what Web 2.0 is…so often in technical companies, when I mention this term outside of marketing, and mainly to those in the field, they think they’ve heard of this, but aren’t sure. So I think there is still tons of ground to cover.
@skyle I’m sure they’re not _really_ out of control
The fact that so many “rogue” wikis have popped up is a testament to their usefulness - even when told “no” at first, people have still brought them in under the radar. Can we say that for any other software tool?
Not sure what you mean here, but every IT department I meet with wants to know how to transition from the widely dispersed collection of wikis that have sprouted up to a centrally supported wiki service that keeps all those groups happy while getting rid of the inadvertent silos created by the eagerness to use wikis. I’ve never come across an IT department that wants to know how to get rid of them (there may be some out there; it’s just that I hear from the ones that want to make wikis successful, not squash them).
@Stewart Mader
“Out of control” as in “it’s time to reel them in!”
and make sense of what has been a “trojan horse” (or as Sam puts it…the pink tasting spoon for enterprise social media) tools, harnessing their applicability in conjunction with what new offerings exist, while defining a strategy that works with current offerings.
I’ve heard lots of talk of “a centrally supported wiki”…but in a company with 10k plus people, that makes for a pretty big group to keep happy, not impossible, but a challenge. Especially if it means taking away the wiki they threw up for their specific group. IT usually want to get rid of all the little illegal wikis that sprouted up when the group solved their own collaboration challenges by building one.
As for the quote about IT–that’s in reference to the fear of change and control (IT) and the challenges to adopting collaboration tools. IT is often a barrier to the process of implementation and they certainly don’t like wikis and other tools run off a server under the desk, for example.
As with any tool, there are without a doubt certain issues with wikis. But whoever is sitting on “over 350 out-of-control wikis” and has no clue how to fix it should not be in charge. Just sayin’…
Time for me to add my own biased opinions to those of Sam and Stewart….
There’s an entire side discussion of this post going on in Twitter. I agree with those who argue that wikis, like any other tool, require both technology and process for long-term adoption.
In some ways, the ease-of-use and flexibility of the wiki is both the reason for its rapid adoption as well as the the reason why so many IT folks feel like the situation has gotten out of control.
The fact is that most of us are not super-rigorous organizers (just look at our desks), and that the adhoc-racy of wikis exposes our changing minds.
On the other hand, this doesn’t mean that folks are going to stop using wikis…the forest of rogue wikis exists for a reason–people are using them. But it does mean that we’re going to have to start figuring out best practices for how to maintain, as well as create, our wikis.
Here at PBwiki, we recently set the norm that every month, each person would devote one hour of their time to cleaning up their portion of the company wiki and making it more useful and clearly organized. It’s been working wonders. And that’s just one simple rule.
I also believe that the future of wikis lies with being able to better integrate with structured and semi-structured data from other applications and systems.
Let wikis do what they do best–be easy and flexible. That makes them the perfect glue for holding together the other more rigid processes of the enterprise.
And furthermore (blatant sales pitch), there’s a reason why PBwiki offers enterprise upgrades–to let IT teams bring their forest of free PBwikis into a more harmonious and manageable whole.
Great commentary and dialogue. As I wrote in my post this isn’t about wikis being bad. It’s that:
A. Wikis have helped fuel the appetite for collaboration solutions in the enterprise
B. Wikis alone don’t meet all of the collaboration needs of an enterprise
Wikis are wonderful tools that help us co-create content, which is why we include wiki-style documents as a part of our Clearspace collaboration platform. However, like @skyle refers to, when you scale beyond a team to an entire company, and that company is tens of thousands of people, there are vastly different requirements. And she’s right that there are a lot of companies who don’t see the solution in just a centralized wiki. Perhaps more interesting is the fact that we don’t run into IT leading this charge. It’s typically a C-level or VP-level leader, sometimes in HR, sometimes in the office of the CIO, but rarely is it lead by the IT department. That strongly supports that collaboration is a business problem with many requirements, one of which is technical.
And, @Tim, the telecom executive I spoke *wasn’t* clueless about how to deal with it. They understood the problem and why it happened to begin with, which is why they were looking for options to remove the pain that looked beyond a wiki to a collaboration platform.
@Tim - That’s so true. But it goes right back to what I said before: those wikis aren’t really “out of control.” Some not-so-forward thinking IT person just perceived them as “out of control” because they don’t have the traditional notion of control where enterprise software is forced on people by a mandate. So yes, you’re right - either way, that person should not be in charge!
Has anyone counted the number of pages on Ward’s wiki that deal with how wiki is by its nature limited? More to the point: how many folk have bothered pondering that?
Years ago I turned left at Kookamunga to find an alternative paradigm for un-structured data. I won’t sing my system’s praises here just now but will say this: nobody much cares. The few folk who are actually stressed by the difficulty of dealing with the tsunami of data (the intelligence analysis community comes to mind) are usually too hard-pressed to entertain the possibility of alternatives. And those who are intent on fun.fun.more.fun (alas, the majority … it’s about buzz and page-views, no?) really don’t care. I mean don’t care /operationally/.
When folk are enthralled by their knew hammer it’s hard to get them to think “wrench” … they just go merrily along, driving nails. (Painfully mixed metaphor in there somewhere?)
I think out of control applies more to multiple instances that don’t communicate with each other. I don’t think the problem is the organizational structure of the content on them. The fact that wikis have cropped up in organizations without a top down rollout does point to their usefulness.
Businesses facing the problem of multiple installations of wikis from a variety of vendors can be resolved by rolling out a company wide wiki. However, businesses that want them to integrate with other communication vehicles, like blogs, will face the problem with point solutions again. Thus, rather than rollout a wiki, smart enterprises will look for a platform that incorporates wikis as one of the important collaboration tools.
My 2ยข
[…] Perhaps they think they’ll side-door it like Blackberry and then IT will have to comply. But like I’ve said, Enterprises come looking for “real solutions” once viral wikis… This is no […]
From my perspective I see Wikis as a means to an end. They are a technology facilitator to enable collaboration. Their real power is in their unstructured nature, and the fact that they put users in control. No longer is the power of communication (e.g. email) centralised by the IT department. @Stewart’s comment regarding “out of control” is appropriate. Wikis by their very nature are “out of control”, but to control a Wiki (in the hierarchical sense and in relation to strict rules) is to try to change it into something it’s not i.e. Sharepoint or a content management system.
I personally don’t see the issue with multiple instances of Wikis. One central Wiki - integrated with a collaboration platform of blogs, document management etc. - is the optimum solution.
So your A and B points above I agree with. Often though it’s difficult to know how to collaborate. If I have a large collaboration platform with lots of options the paradox of choice can set in. Should I collaborate using online chat, via a blog and comments, via video e.g. Seesmic idea, should I use online documents, should I use the forums or should I use the wiki? The more options that are available the more daunting and difficult making a choice can become.