While there’s ample reporting these days about the blogging backlash, I’m not reading much about the concurrent backlash against wikis.
Yet as the blogging skeptics and critics find their voice, wikis are getting bound up in the discussion. For example, a post expressing dismay about IBM’s employee blogging initiative, “The PC Doctor” also takes a swipe at the wiki IBM used to set its employee blogging policies. The comment includes a link to Hacknot and a post by “Mr. Ed” that articulates the author’s issues with wikis in excruciating detail.
Mr. Ed makes several assertions in his post without troubling himself with any supporting evidence. For example, he writes, “The sad reality is that Wikis are often just a pretext for procrastination” and “…the Wiki becomes a dumping ground for fragmented and incomplete files, textual sound-bites and aborted attempts to catalogue.”
Aside from the author’s unsupported assertions (based largely on his visit to a single wiki), the problem with this and similar criticism is the presumption that all wikis are simply launched and left to the devices of anybody who wants to post to it. While there are wikis like that, most organizaitons employing the tool do so with at least some semblance of a strategy.
Any medium-whether it’s a traditional channel like print or a new one like blogs and wikis-is a tool, a tactic. Most new media inspire a rush to use them without thought about whether they will accomplish goals or represent the best approach to achieving an objective. We need look back to the introduction of desktop publishing to see how choosing tools before developng strategy can go awry. Inside organizations, departments undertook publication of dozens (in some cases, hundreds) of awful, pointless newsletters, resulting in an unprecedented information overload. Just because the tool made communicating easy didn’t make it a good idea.
So it is with blogs and wikis. Yes, most organizations should consider blogs, but not for their own sake. They need to be part of a business strategy, a communication strategy. If GM had just opened a blog because, by God, they ought to blog, Fastlane would be a jumbled mess talking about whatever was blowing around in the wind. Instead, it was strategized as a product-focused blog and has thrived.
So it is with wikis. I set up a wiki for a U.S. client that was organizing an event in Europe. The wiki was restricted to members of the event’s advisory board, a means by which advisors could plan speakers, sessions, tracks. Dedicated PR practitioners contribute to Constantin Basturea’s TheNewPR, which has not suffered any of the consequences Mr. Ed seems to think are inherent in the tool. Internally, organizations use wikis where the collaborative nature of the tool will enhance an effort, just as IBM sought employee thinking around its blogging policy.
In the strategic planning process, the goal comes first; What do we want to accomplish? In support of the goal, we create broad approaches called strategies. Measurable objectives are established for each strategy. Then, for each objective, we develop tactics that include tools. Can you imagine how the D-Day invasion of Normandy would have gone if the first thing planners had said was, “We need lots of ships. And rifles! We gotta have rifles! What kind of cool rifles can we get?”
There’s nothing new about the notion of a communication tool poorly applied. From the business perspective, there will be excellent examples of wikis and blogs-and examples that will make you cringe. Most of the time, planning will be the difference. There’s nothing inherently good or bad about the tools themselves.
Shel Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology which focuses on helping organizations apply online communication capabilities to their strategic organizational communications.
As a professional communicator, Shel also writes the blog a shel of my former self.
