A giant step towards flawless execution
“Wiki”. Even the word is silly.
Say wiki out loud among responsible adults and get the same look you’d expect if you brought up your Dungeons & Dragons fairy character with strength = 10. Over Scotch at the Algonquin.
Last time, I quickly covered by bringing up wikipedia (amazing encyclopedia built with a wiki). My companions were relieved that I was not speaking complete gibberish. We hurriedly changed topics before they risked hearing about my comic book collection.
But wikis really are that important to banks, software companies - virtually any organization that has access to computers. While wikipedia is amazing, it has very little to do with the true power of a wiki in a company.
Boiled down, a wiki lets users create and modify web pages for the rest of the organization. A normal web site is merely published.
The difference? A wiki is created by everyone and does not take much technical skill.
The wiki is secure and password protection gives everyone access to the correct areas. It can accept pictures, files, links, everything. You can search for text and categorize everything.
But the most important aspect is robustness: the wiki can’t be broken. The wiki is under version control. It’s simple to see what’s changed and revert to an older version. So mistakes are encouraged.
Why is this so powerful? Everyone joins in. Let’s explore some examples of wiki information in a small company that helps banks optimize deposit pricing.
- Rote work - any procedures we perform repeatedly get documented. It doesn’t matter if it is a core business process or peripheral work:
- Creating a software build
- Implementing a new client
- Printing, folding, and binding a double-sided booklet on special paper
- Preparing for a sales call
- Reordering supplies
- Library - files, links, pictures, anything that multiple people need
- Data files
- Letterhead and stationary
- Competitive info
- Industry information
- Sales collateral
- Employee contact list
- Core concepts - As we built our software, we ran into hundreds of complex issues. We explained the reasoning and documented any proof we could.
- How do we deal with missing data feeds?
- How are the various statistical analyses stitched together?
- Why are rate exceptions important?
- Software documentation - all issues that affect our users are placed within the wiki
- Explanations of each screen
- Deposit pricing issues
- Latest software release
The net effect is terrific. We:
- Standardize - everyone performs monotonous tasks the same way
- Improve - Experts document improvements as they work through different procedures. It’s also easier to produce company-wide improvements because there’s more visibility across departments. Goodbye, bank silos.
- Think - keeping track of a million rote procedures in your head is difficult. Committing these procedures to paper leaves more room to be creative.
- Discuss - complex conversations can be shortened by referring someone to knowledge that’s already been wikied.
- Teach - it’s a lot easier to bring on someone new when they know where to look for instructions
- Automate - Occasionally, a manual process can be removed through automation. If the process has already been standardized and documented in the wiki, automation becomes remarkably easier.
As if this wasn’t enough, the best wikis are open source and free. You can build one for Bank of America with a total software cost of $0. And while I’m a big Microsoft fan, wikis are far better than Sharepoint.
Wikis can’t cover everything. People will always carry a lot of valuable knowledge and experience in their heads. But wikis let employees execute rote work quickly and flawlessly, so they can get back to their real jobs - using their expertise in ways no one else can.
Update: James Taylor points out the 6th way we use our wiki - it prepares us for any future automation. The advantages of clear documentation and standardized procedure are huge in automating manual processes. We recently benefited from the wiki documentation in installing a CRM system.
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Great article Mike! Do you have any standards re style for your wiki and do you use/miss tags?
We have standards about writing wiki pages. Kept on the wiki, of course. :)
Standards are pretty important, because the wiki is more readable when all the articles are laid out in similar fashion. But it’s hard to expect everyone to follow every standard.
I’m thinking of hiring a college kid to work part-time keeping the wiki in good order.
Re: tagging. I’m a laggard - one of the few people who don’t use Del.icio.us. I assume when I get with the program, I’ll bitterly miss tags.
We categorize articles together - I think this may be the wiki equivalent of tagging.
Mike
[…] The Price of Everything - Mike Schoeffler’s runs Profitdesk, one of the few micro-ISVs with a banking product. Mike brings a studied determination to what he does, and his posts about the inner workings of Profitdesk are a gold mine for others who want to get some real structure into their micro-ISV. His latest post on how Profitdesk uses a wiki is at least for me must reading. […]
Mike,
Which wiki software do you use / recommend?
Very happy with mediawiki (which wikipedia runs on). I figure the more popular, the more likely someone else has hit the bugs first.
But Bob Walsh (http://bobwalsh.vox.com/library/post/going-wiki.html) points out an amazing comparison tool called wikimatrix (http://www.wikimatrix.org/). Seems like a good place to start.
I think I finally understand the whole Wiki thing. It’s a means to redact an Oral Tradition, very similar to the process by which the Talmud was compiled.
Interesting take. A wiki also uses multiple commentators to unpeel a large, difficult subject. But the graphics are much better in the wiki. :)
Interesting post and a good point. I think we need to take care, as Carl Frappalo says in his book “Knowledge Management” (http://www.edmblog.com/weblog/2006/11/book_review_kno.html):”In some cases, knowledge believed to be tacit is only so labeled because no-one has ever taken the time or energy to codify the knowledge”
The danger with wikis is that they perpetuate the manual processes of decision-making. As long as they are combined with a rational assessment of the possibilities of automation they are a great tool.