This is a great example from Eugene Kim on how to bridge the digital divide between excellent facilitation and creating a “project” that assembles up the work as one goes along. In his post Eugene explores the value of “creating a book”. What’s important here is it is not the tool (wiki) it is the concept of the “book” that made this work. He also highlights a simple initial exercise for getting involvement.
…. the primary group exercise at the event was to write a book. The exact topic and format was not specified — that would evolve as the workshop unfolded.
The book exercise solved many problems. …. it built knowledge assembly into the workshop process. More importantly, it made the participants responsible for that assembly, which kept them invested in the content…. At this event, the participants documented the workshop themselves using the Wiki.
As an initial exercise, we precreated pages for every participant. We then asked people to add some information about themselves, then to go through the Wiki and comment on another page that interested them. Having people write in their own pages allowed us to avoid a massive edit conflict problem. It also gave people a fallback if they were unsure of where to add content, and it populated the Wiki with a lot of useful and interesting information. People are social animals. We like to read about other people. (212)
EEK Speaks
I believe there is not enough thinking going into how we shape the leaders and managers of tomorrow. They will learn to use these tools however the discovery and integration of them into learning programs must be focused on managerial and leadership skills and performance. They use them as part of the program. It happens without thinking and as part of enhancing their skills and how they will project themselves and manage their boss, peers and team. So go use the book metaphor and include a moblog learning journey around the organization. Do audioblog interviews of each other. Add in some leadership development or TMI programs. Discuss what it takes to be a principled blog leader etc. Consider management and leadership style. Then let them decide on what the benefits are who should do what and put a program into motion. I’d keep a group like this to 8-12 people and focus on accelerating the leadership of creativity and innovation..
Now if you are an HR professional I presume you will say… time and efficiency and will these new “things be additive to my workload? I’d suggest certainly not by design, in fact quite the contrary. Still it begins for any organization with an exploratory leap and a small group.
