Fan the Flames with Confluence Blogs
November 6, 2008 6:35 AM
Thomas Edison once said, "Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." At the Defrag conference this week, Professor William Duggan of the Columbia Business School focused on that very important one percent.
Where do creative ideas come? Duggan suggests that the great creative sparks in human achievement were the product of one individual who mashed together ideas and concepts from different disciplines. He cites some compelling historical examples, like how Henry Ford's moving assembly line was a mashup of the Oldsmobile assembly plant and the moving lines of Chicago's meat-packing plants.
This got me thinking about how teams can propagate and re-mash their own great ideas. One way we do this at Atlassian is through personal blogging. Atlassian is a blogging culture. We're a company of only ~200 employees but every day we have dozens of employee blog posts inside of Confluence along with hundreds of comments. When I have a great idea on how to improve our products or processes, I blog about it in Confluence. When I have something to contribute to someone's post, I add a comment sometimes even embedding a photo, video or slideshow. Then I watch the post to get email notifications whenever someone replies to my comment or makes another comment.
But why is blogging your idea better than simply sharing it with the person next to you or sending it out in an email blast? Here are some reason that I blog:
1) Blogs know no boundaries. We're a geographically dispersed company...many employees in San Francisco and many more in Sydney. My team doesn't sit within 10 feet of me or on the same floor for that matter.
2) Blogs are an opt-in mechanism. I'm not forcing my idea on anyone like I would be doing with email. People comment on my blog because they want to, not because they feel compelled to respond to an email.
3) Blog posts are discoverable by all. If my idea is trapped in an email, it's limited to reaching only the people I send it to. By blogging I can reach anyone in the company.
4) Blog posts are infinite. With a blog, my idea is forever searchable on our internal wiki. So even if my idea is ahead of it's time, someone still might pick it up and find it useful months or years from now.
I'm sure there are more reasons but these are the ones that readily occur to me. While not every idea can be a great spark in human achievement, every blog post in Confluence can be a tiny spark that contributes to your own team's achievement.
Copyright © 2009 Atlassian Pty Ltd.
3 Comment(s)
GREAT article! Yes!!
Professor Duggan is a smart man, and a looker too in that Hollywood-esque B/W picture you have posted there..
This is **the** ticket to BEST success in high tech companies (assuming good tech too)!
I am a firm believer. To add to your list:
* Allowing everyone a chance to "make a difference" - what everyone wants in jobs.
* Sharing the limelight - not just managers are important - spurring teamwork.
* Bringing management to an even keel with the do-ers at times, and be people, not unapproachables (perceived or real).
* Inspiring employee empowerment, engagement, and stoke to arrive earlier, stay later, b/c they WANT to, b/c they are excited about their ideas and workplace that hears them.
* Geling technical and non-technical audiences together in one place - always good to break down those walls in good ways!
* Creating positive controversy (since not all ideas are good ideas) - teaches humility without uncomfortable confrontation in teams. For example: be great at what you do, but do not disrespect or be an A**.
* Creating positive methodology to share disagreements in mature ways too.
* Allowing company to take *significant* intellectual property advantage of great ideas that are otherwise lost in emails or meetings.
* Allowing positive personal competitiveness (compete with yourself to learn, know, develop more, be self-aware, or know when *you* need to go back and study).
* Easing the load on managers who have no time to evangelize great ideas that should indeed surface (from their emails or 1-1s).
* Allowing faster relationships to evolve, allowing faster team progress.
* Allowing credit to be given to who deserves it, not stolen (as happens sometimes in emails) - keeps people honest.
* Flushing bad or incomplete ideas over time in writing to become good ideas.
* Making things happen faster because they are written down - always easier when things are written down and tuned to crystallization.
* Improving people's writing skills and to become better communicators - always good!
* Making people accountable (stand behind your words).
* Reviewing has no expiration - still there days later if get behind.
* Giving a place for everyone to be heard (or politely shamed, if they earn it - and if shamed, always a new day tomorrow, live/learn/do better, or move on if you need to).
* Making people THINK responsibly (for themselves and their impact) - not just live.
* and yes, best of all - opt in, at will. And no shame if not - since it is "just a blog" afterall - it's not your REAL work (technically).
Yes! The positives (vs. negatives) are endless.
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Ayyy - preaching to the Atlassian choir though - you guys live this, and proving it in your success! Good on you and keep up the good work!
By Ellen Feaheny at November 6, 2008 9:47 AM
@Ellen Thanks for all the great additions. You've clearly been giving this some thought. I especially like your ideas around sharing the limelight, positive controversy, competition and accountability.
A little story for you...one of our PMs / engineers blogged internally about a plugin he'd been developing in his spare time. Everyone (including our founders) were so impressed that we decided to invest more into building out his work, testing it and including it in our next release. That never would have happened if he hadn't blogged it.
By Bill Arconati
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November 6, 2008 10:53 AM
Good points, especially about the e-mail, I steal this idea, and put it on my blog on the corporate wiki (i) inspired by Bill Arconati (with backlink). Started Confluence and blogging 6 months ago, just to boot up the culture, but it is slow to take on, very few followers yet.
In our standard Confluence 2.9 I cannot see how often my pages are read, I cannot embed external images or media. I wish we had text rating like wikipatterns or even clip rating as on http://mixedink.com
By Bernd Nurnberger at November 13, 2008 10:28 AM