Institutional memory and Institutional knowledge are two subtle and unique characteristics, sharing knowledge is what we are supposed to be good at yet internally its our biggest weakness. The WMF would do well to have a "historian" on staff to document and maintain our movements' history. Internally it is the responsibility of the human resources department to ensure that the knowledge required and collected in any position is captured and then transferred appropriately as people and positions change.
One issue we have is that a very significant amount of our Institution knowledge is held by volunteers that knowledge is held closely as it builds their reputation while creating a power base that gives them leverage for special opportunities. Its difficult to get volunteers to willingly hand over knowledge that makes them special and able to stand out. Part of that is ensuring that at least WMF staff are able to connect directly with a wider selection of the community at events, and why its so important that conduits of knowledge are broadly dispersed beyond just these gatekeepers.
On Wed, 26 Aug 2020 at 09:11, Michael Snow wikipedia@frontier.com wrote:
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 interms
of thorough encyclopedic documentation of important events in itshistory.
There have been exceptions, and I believe that where it has beendone 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_Re...
. 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 admirethe
WMF's Executive Director/CEO; she is highly skilled, and a kindperson. But
I am continually surprised that there has been little acknowledgmentof
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 notsurprising,
if an organization is guided by an executive with a Communications background, that it would not embrace an encyclopedic approach toits 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
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