The Wiki Workplace
The Wiki Workplace over at Business Week, looks at how companies are looking at, surprisingly, Wikis (and other collaborative tools).
Key point:
Lead users have decreased e-mail volume by 75% and cut the company’s meetings time in half. Rangaswami says: “We recognized that these tools would allow us to collaborate more effectively than existing technologies.”
This is interesting.
Previously, I noticed that a key benefit from Wikis is the reduction in email volume.
Interesting Notes (on organisation and structure):
Clear goals, structure, discipline, and leadership in the organization will remain as important as ever and perhaps more so as self-organization and peer production emerge as organizing principles for the workplace. The difference today is that these qualities can emerge organically as employees seize the new tools to collaborate across departmental and organizational boundaries, and, yes, “the power of human capital” can be unleashed.
The trend I keep on seeing is:
If there is no tool for information sharing, people will use email.
Give them a Wiki (or other tool), and the email volume will decrease, and documentation will increase.