How are companies
using internal wikis?
by Thomas Myer
Triple Dog Dare Media

Key Practices
• Listen
• Talk
• Energize
• Support
• Collaborate

Listen
• Listening is the first step in problem solving
• Capture ideas and brainstorms from
employees
• Allow suggestions for improvements and
innovation
• Case Study: Bell Canada

Bell Canada: ID-ah
• Largest Canadian telephone/telecom
company
• Internal wiki for “idea exchange”
• Employees submit and vote on ideas
• Helped prioritize ideas from 40,000 strong
workforce

Talk
• Share the rules of the road
• Policy & Procedures manuals
• Allow executive team to share their vision
• Case Study: BT’s BTPedia

BT: BTPedia
• 160 year old provider of communications
solutions and services operating in 170
countries
• Serves 20 million businesses in UK
• BTPedia includes articles on procedures,
policies, and product roadmaps
• Part of overall intranet effort

Energize
• Spread positive thinking and ideas across
the team and enterprise
• Allow better communication of ideas and
feedback between management and
workers
• Case Study: Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation

Best Buy: Blue Shirt
Nation
• It’s a voluntary outlet where employees can
share customer stories, tips, best practices,
and ideas to help company grow
• Over 25,000 regular users
• Employees can share thoughts or comment
on others

Support
• Employees helping each other
• Get new employees up to speed fast
• Allow easier integration between and
across divisions/teams/branches
• Case Study: Cisco’s CiscoPedia

Cisco: CiscoPedia
• Began as an internal wiki
• Used to capture technical information on
TCP/IP, IGRP, Frame Relay,VLANs,
Ethernet, and more
• Used to train employees and later support
customers/partners/vendors
• Now available as a product

Collaborate
• Work together on a number of projects
• Proposals, FAQs, documentation
• Presentations, specifications, support
notes
• Organize events, responses to PR crisis
• Record meeting notes
• Case Study: Dresdner Kleinwort
Wasserstein

Dresdner Kleinwort
Wasserstein
• An investment bank with 6,000 employees
• HQ in London and Frankfurt
• Used wiki to enhance collaboration
• Wiki used by 2,500 employees
• Reduced emails, increased quality of
documents

Takeaways for Success
1. Get executive buy-in early
2. A wiki champion or maven is key to staying
on target
3. Identify those who would generate a lot of
content
4. Seed the wiki
5. Provide incentives for using the wiki

For More Information
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http://www.tripledogs.com
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http://myerman.posterous.com
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@myerman