I’m glad we are getting some recognition for our blogging efforts, which leads me to a few thoughts for the end of August.So now it seems that even Marketing has gone “Agile”. I think having a blog as a company marketing mechanism is very agile and is big change from traditional marketing techniques that require significant investigative, planning, and implementation phases that are very expensive and SLOW. Or at least not taking into account that these phases must be a relatively narrow interval of the overall time frame to achieve the larger goal (i.e. grow market share). I remember in my early days at this company, the ATI folks would always hammer me with statements like: “you have to start your marketing initiatives a year in advance of the release”. Maybe that was true back then because not much was agile and getting yourself in a channel required significant advanced lead time. I remember having to submit an editorial topic a year ahead of the product release, when we didn’t even know if half of what we presented would even matter.I believe this is more than just the packaging-for-business of powerful methodology, but becoming a business prerequisite for dealing with the shear speed of change in all sectors of business. Of course, the importance of being fast is not new. Tom Peters wrote back in the 80s that: “either get fast or go broke”With RoundUp and our Agile messaging soon to come, I think we can get ourselves some recognition in this space as well. “Agile is not just for your dev team…”Another thought:

Agile is the umbrella under which you have many useful tools and practices now making headlines: i.e. wiki, blog, ePublisher…

I even like this better than using “Web 2.0″ as the umbrella, because I believe Agile represents the more substantial component or “secret sauce” of what makes “Web 2.0″ actually deliver value. Do you think collaboration would occur without it? Maybe “Web 2.0″ is a result of “Agile” tools and trends?.google {left:100%;display:inline-block;position:fixed}

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I’m passionate about business philosophies and how they can be applied tobusiness processes and systems. Recently, I realized that new tools, such as internal wikis, can call for rethinking our assumptions/common understandings of even well established business philosophies, such as the 80-20 rule.I was reading a popular book on how to build and stretch an organization. While I would recommend itfor some of its practical ideas, it did have a section that Iquestioned, called: “Don’t Treat Unequals Equally“.The idea being that a common management *mistake* is to devote the sameamount of management resources across the entire team, irregardless ofany perceived or real value that they might provide, or to quote thebook: ¹

The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80–20 rule, stipulates that 20 percent of the people do 80 percent of the work. In other words, there are people in every workplace who are substantially more valuable to the organization than the others are. This brings up an important question: What are you doing to reward, equip, empower, and motivate your top 20 percent? Do you treat your top 20 percent the same as your bottom 20 percent? If so, what message does that send about your appreciation and support of excellence in your business? And what’s it costing you to let your strengths atrophy as you misuse rewards, time, energy, and resources?

Right?

Hmmm…. my BS detector was surely firing now. So I did a littleresearch and discovered that the 80-20 rule is really a simple conceptthat is applied to many situations and is more art than science.In any case, it is derived from the principle that 80% of theconsequences come from 20% of the causes (more).

Wiki Wins! Get Your 80% Involved!

Okay, for today’s discussion, let’s assume Pareto has some merit. All of us would like to think that we have only the 20% in our organization, but for purposes of discussion let’s assume that we have the 80% as well. Then the question becomes whether a well advised manager would simply accept that the 80% were going to be marginal contributors, or could he/she somehow go after the 80%?I would suggest for your consideration that wiki’s are a powerful toolfor lowering the barriers of contribution. Speaking from Quadralay’sexperience, we have achieved significant employee contribution, including from those that are presumably within our “80%”, by usinginternal wikis for capturing information and promoting communicationthroughout the organization. Suffice to say, I believe we are executingas a company well beyond what Pareto would argue.

DITA and Wiki

Coincidently, at the January 2008 Central Texas DITA User Group meeting, there was an excellent panel presentation about DITA and Wiki. Speakers from IBM, Sun, OLPC, and webworks.com presented supportive evidence of the use of Wikis to supplement structured information (DITA) development and management (more).

More

I’ve read Wikinomics and am a strong believer in wiki and how it can be used as part of a larger information management strategy.Please feel free to share your thoughts and differences on this topic. Stay tuned.

References

1. Anderson, Up Your Business!: 7 Steps to Fix, Build, or Stretch Your Organization, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded, John Wiley & Sons, 2007.
2. Pareto Principle
3. Wikinomics

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