On 8/25/2020 4:34 PM, Pete Forsyth wrote:
I've thought about institutional memory quite a lot since I stopped working at WMF in 2011. A few points I think are worth considering:
5. The Wikimedia Foundation has not historically done very much in terms of thorough encyclopedic documentation of important events in its history. There have been exceptions, and I believe that where it has been done and done well, much good has come of it. The best example of this, in my opinion, is the Assessment of Belfer Center Wikipedian in Residence program <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Assessment_of_Belfer_Center_Wikipedian_in_Residence_program>. This was initiated by then-Executive Director Sue Gardner and her deputy Erik Möller, who participated actively in it. Specific programmatic improvements in the Grants department were a direct outcome. 11. In closing, I'd like to make a point about the skillset the WMF board has hired. I want to be really explicit -- I like and admire the WMF's Executive Director/CEO; she is highly skilled, and a kind person. But I am continually surprised that there has been little acknowledgment of what the board did by hiring her, and the direction the WMF has (unsurprisingly) taken since her hire. She was previously the WMF's Communications Director, and her earlier career was largely in communications. I would urge others to consider that it is not surprising, if an organization is guided by an executive with a Communications background, that it would not embrace an encyclopedic approach to its own self-knowledge.
I want to react to a couple of Pete's points here. First, as to the closing point, I think it overrates the effect of the individual Executive Director/CEO on what are, after all, institutional and collective processes. While I recognize the importance of the role in heading the organization, that person may try to shape the overall culture, but they are not really the source of it. Just consider what transpired between the two Executive Directors mentioned above; while that was a difficult time and the organizational culture suffered significantly, I would argue that the underlying culture at the community/staff/"grassroots" level is what forced the organization to reconsider and change directions. Organizational culture determines how institutional memory is transmitted, and simultaneously that memory becomes part of the culture and shapes it.
Pete also offers much good advice about maintaining institutional knowledge, but I think it's a mistaken dichotomy to view two different modes of presenting information ("encyclopedic" and "communications") as if they are conflicting philosophies rather than merely separate skillsets. People can have both, or value both even when their personal skills are stronger in one or the other. To the extent the Wikimedia Foundation struggles to have an encyclopedic approach to institutional memory, frankly that problem is nearly universal among organizations. It's less the background of a particular leader than the general emphasis on "getting things done" over documenting what was done, how, and why.
Going back to the earlier point, it's good to recognize Sue and Erik's leadership in an assessment that can serve as a positive model. With respect to encouraging a more "encyclopedic" approach, I think it's worth observing that from a conventional organizational leadership perspective, Erik was a pretty nontraditional choice for the deputy role (and even a sometimes controversial figure within the community). Nevertheless, he and Sue made an excellent pairing in their roles, and he was an important part of ensuring that the organization understood and valued the community, its culture, and the "encyclopedic" approach. I believe this illustrates why it's important for the Wikimedia Foundation to continue valuing experience in the community for all of its hiring, so that the staff can maintain a culture that stays in sync with the movement. It's less about one or two specific leadership positions, and more that every Wikimedia ED/CEO needs to surround themselves with a variety of people who bring different pieces of institutional memory with them.
--Michael Snow