Rarely in modern life do the decision makers who sit at the top of the power pyramid ever listen to those at the very bottom— despite the fact that the people at the bottom are expected to carry out the mission of the organization or institution.
How do leaders or decision makers easily capture the valuable insights, ideas, observations and wisdom from the frontline, hands-on, experience of peer groups that reside at the bottom of the power pyramid?
How do they learn from the frontline about issues that are plaguing the system? How can you make it comfortable for them to come forward and share what they know in a way that could be used to inform policy making and priority-setting?
The answer is WikiWisdom.
A WikiWisdom Forum harnesses the power of technology, peer collaboration and networks to unearth front-line wisdom and connect it to people in power.
In traditional organizational structures, insights, ideas, and recommendations must overcome the impediments created by layers of bureaucracy before they can rise to the top. The bright ideas that start on this journey often arrive in a very different form, having been re-articulated, rewritten, and reformatted until they have lost their essential truth.
WikiWisdom is the solution to this problem.
WikiWisdom uses the internet to offer people a chance to do more than gripe about their situation. It gives them the opportunity to use their knowledge to tell the powers that be how to do things better. It’s a rare gift to people at both ends of the power structure.
How to WikiWisdom
How it Works
The WikiWisdom process works because the participants are guaranteed their ideas will be heard by someone in power.
There are six steps to a WikiWisdom project:
Start at the top. The leader of the organization agrees to listen and learn from the frontline workers about a specific problem facing the organization. This can be a risky proposition for leaders because there are no guarantees they will like what they hear.
Guarantee access. Participants are drawn to the online conversation by the promise that their ideas will be presented directly to someone who has the desire to listen to them and the power to effect change.
Generate ideas. A targeted group of peers — those frontline experts — are invited to an online, moderated conversation. They register under their real names — no anonymity here — and share ideas on how to solve a specific problem using their everyday experience in the workplace or in their community. The moderation ensures everyone is heard and that gripes are turned into actionable ideas.
Sort the data. An algorithm identifies the most engaged thought leaders in the idea generation phase. Once the online discussion ends, these individuals are invited to join a small group that will take the ideas to the next step.
Mine the “cognitive surplus.” The small group of thought leaders work with the moderator to distill and expand the ideas generated by the large group into a written report filled with actionable ideas and solutions.
Back up to the top. The thought leader group meets in person with the leader of the organization to present the group’s ideas and get direct feedback.
Cognitive Surplus
The American writer Clay Shirky advocated that combining human generosity, the ease of sharing on the Internet, and people’s free time, society has available a “cognitive surplus” to help solve problems and find new solutions.
WikiWisdom gives leaders a way to harness the “cognitive surplus” of those who are closest to the customer, the student, the patient. By working collaboratively as a peer group, those frontline workers can solve problems and create new ideas based upon their experience.
“Celebrate and support and reward the people trying to use cognitive surplus to create civic value...to the degree we’re able to do that, we’ll be able to change society.”
Guide to a WikiWisdom Forum
The question forum members are asked to address.
Letter from top executive/decision maker inviting participants, explains goal of forum.
Moderator explains the process.
Members register as themselves to participate.
Members submit ideas, which are commented on by their peers.
“It was a truly innovative and effective way to effectively engage with our patients, nurses and physicians, all of whom felt comfortable using the online platform to share feedback directly with me and my leadership team about the challenges they face every day. More importantly, the platform enabled them to offer realistic solutions for those same challenges.
For example, a WikiWisdom conversation with our patients gave us numerous, important insights. As just one learning, we discovered how critical it is to have hearing loops installed across the system. While embarrassing, this significant concern from our hearing impaired patients wasn’t even on our radar screen and yet it was easy to remedy.
In our nurses’ forum, we learned that a particular policy that we believed to be very neutral was in fact negatively impacting staff morale; we then eliminated the policy in less than 72 hours. Still another WikiWisdom conversation with our doctors gave our IT department the idea and courage to invest in staff dedicated to shadowing our physicians to learn first-hand how they were impacted by EMR challenges - and how those could be remedied.”
From Preventing Physician Burnout,
“The CEO has used information captured in the WikiWisdom reports to make rapid fixes to problems that had plagued the frontline staff, but were never communicated all the way up the chain of command.
For example, through the nurses’ WikiWisdom report, he learned that for years seasoned nurses had objected to having to take the personality test given to new hires when they transferred from one job to another within the system. One week later the requirement was eliminated...
Paulus told us, ‘WikiWisdom is a very effective, low-cost, easy, rapid way to get direct visualization on what’s going on in the minds of the people who really matter.’”