Martin Cleaver MSc MBA. Blended Perspectives, Toronto.

To improve business performance and to out-compete, an organization needs not only advantageous information but also to act upon it. Organizations that depend on a few key staff to gather information to help inform strategists who then “tell” the “workers” what to do will be at a disadvantage compared to those that “crowd source” to collect and consolidate ideas, observations and plans from hundreds of people who will have to execute that strategy.

Few companies have a shortage of information, for we all have Google. The issue is too much, unconsolidated, unactionable information.

Company performance depends on getting internal staff and partners to act together. They need gather data, draw it together to mean something coherent, and make it actionable with respect to the organization.

Plans have to “fit” the company and its agents: their aspirations, their existing promises, their existing processes. When you engage staff to spread the task of thinking about what needs to be done next and engage people in the planning process to make it happen you light up an organization.

Is your organization using your wiki for this? Are you now seeing Wikinomics type effects spread across your company?

Come to beautiful Porto in September and share your stories with those of researchers and corporate practitioners. WikiSym 2008 and our community is the place for you.