With the announcement of the Wired Magazine article on wikis that is being collaboratively written via wiki I started thinking about different uses of wiki technology within organizations.

One of the most important pieces of marketing collateral in any organization is the story of the organization. And the closer that your organization is to its beginning, the better the opportunity to start creating an accurate record of key events in the organization’s history.

The importance of such an effort can’t be overstated. Capsule versions of organization history are typically found on websites and in marketing brochures. Stories are told to prospective clients at sales meetings. I’ve never been in a first time sales meeting where I haven’t talked about “who we are” and listed important milestones of the business.

Organizational history is not just important when reaching out though. Company employees should have a strong knowledge of organizational history so that they can learn from mistakes as well as successes. In smaller organizations many employees may come in contact with potential sales opportunities that will require them to talk about key milestones on a moments notice.

Without a wiki this task would likely be accomplished by having individual members of the organization writing out their version of events. Those versions would then be gathered by one of more people and edited into a single document. That document would then be uploaded to the corporate internet for the reference of the entire organization.

That approach might work pretty well the first time around but the organization history is a very live document. So repeating the process for all changes would probably get tiresome. And what if one person wants to provide more (or more accurate) information in an area written by another person? It could be done but not without more time and effort than necessary.

Wiki technology allows multiple people across the organization to create and edit various parts of the document simultaneously. The effort still requires editing and moderation to insure proper organization and accuracy. But the continued growth of the document becomes a much simpler task. No more emailing of documents to multiple individual for editing. No more spending hours merging multiple documents into a single cohesive resource.

If you start thinking about all the items that can be contained in your organizational history wiki, the list can get quite long. The story of the company founders. The addition of key employees along the way. The story if developing key products and services. Key client wins. Company press coverage. The list could go on and on.

So if you already have an organizational history document, consider helping to grow the document by porting the information to a wiki. If you haven’t started one yet then consider startiing off on the right foot by using wikis to foster much simpler collaboration, editing and distribution. 

[tags]Social Media, Wiki, Business Ideas[/tags]