Wikis and Reducing Latency in Information Exchange

It doesn't take a large leap of logic to see that ideas flowing through an organization are like materials moving down a manufacturing assembly line. New marketing ideas, fledgling strategic initiatives or recently started IT projects are like partially finished products, waiting for add-on components and additional processing to improve their quality.

Most would agree that moving a promising initiative through an organization can be difficult. For the idea to move from concept to execution (or abandonment), it must undergo a refinement process. Challenging, dissenting or complementary ideas are incorporated to either forge the final product or reveal critical deficiencies. More problematic are the natural information buffers or barriers that constrain this idea exchange; the right conversations must be initiated, meetings must be scheduled and run, and unwieldy email chains must be deciphered.

It is for lack of more efficient, open communication vehicles that ideas and information, which should be benefiting the organization, stack-up in an unused or delayed state; in employees' minds, as forgotten documents on a file system, or as emails buried in inboxes. This information is like partially-finished inventory backing-up on a shop floor between processing stations. And like manufacturing bottlenecks caused by inefficient or nonexistent signaling, information latency between teams or individuals can be assigned a dollar cost in terms of underemployed knowledge capital, not to mention decreased employee morale and retention.

Wikis and the collaboration they foster, help shrink information buffers between individuals and teams, enabling more efficient hand-offs between personnel which allows the organization to more quickly refine and advance ideas, plans and projects.

alex.mcclintock@socialtext.com

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