Three Month Update & Wikimedia Foundation Draft Annual Plan - Wikimedia-l

14 Apr 2022

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Hi everyone,

It’s my third time writing to you in this format. My first note was on
September 14 last year when my appointment was announced [1], then on
January 14 when I shared what I heard from many of you on the listening
tour [2], and now on April 14 to reflect on my first three months as CEO of
the Wikimedia Foundation. I am home in South Africa after a few months in
the United States, where the highlight of joining Wikimedia has been
bringing colleagues together – volunteers, editors, affiliates, Foundation
staff, board members – to reconnect at a human level. I sense that
gathering in person again, where it is safe and practical to do so, may
help us all build and rebuild relationships.

Reinforcing connections to each other, and to the world beyond us, is some
of what I reflected on in my “Puzzles and Priorities” letter, which
followed from conversations with hundreds of Wikimedians. [2]  Three months
later, I wanted to share some of the progress we’ve started to make on the
priorities.

Priority 1: Foundation’s Annual Plan

My top priority was reimagining the way we approached planning at the
Wikimedia Foundation. Since January, we have done the following:

   -

   We started by asking what the world needs from us now - a question I
   heard from many of you last year.  One starting point for this year’s
   planning was to look at some (not all) of the key trends shaping the world
   around us: from the rise of government regulation to the increased threats
   of misinformation and disinformation, the changing nature of search, and
   growing global demands for content. We hosted a staff conversation in
   January and

<https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/01/28/what-does-the-world-need-from-us-now-external-trends-to-watch/>asked
   communities for their additional insights. [3]
   -

   We then tried to answer – in two ways – the question of how the
   Foundation’s current resources were being allocated now: (1) an
   organizational overview looking at how the Foundation collectively supports
   Wikimedia projects, regions, language communities and audiences; and (2)
   department overviews to help our staff understand all of the current work.
   These processes have gone through 2-3 iterations since January based on
   suggestions for further improvement from our teams.
   -

   We also provided guidance on slower budget growth. The Wikimedia
   Foundation has grown very rapidly over the past 3 years – increasing its
   budget by more than 30% in the past year with the addition of more than 200
   new people since 2020. [4] This will not continue as we stabilize this
   expansion and make sure that new resources are delivering maximum impact
   for our mission. We anticipate a 17% increase in our 2022−2023 budget, most
   of this representing inflationary and other year-on-year costs. Funding to
   other movement entities (individual and affiliate) will increase for next
   year by at least the same 17% percent, if not more. Because the vast
   majority of the Foundation’s own budget is allocated to staffing costs, our
   most important resource decisions are about the time and performance of our
   people and teams.
   -

   We spent time reflecting on the strategic direction that should guide
   our annual planning. The Wikimedia Foundation’s recent annual plans have
   identified important high-level goals and medium-term objectives
   <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-term_plan_2019>.
   [5] Historically, it has not always been clear how these related to the
   movement strategy, a multi-year process to provide clarity of direction to
   2030. We have adopted the strategic direction of our Movement Strategy

<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017#Our_strategic_direction:_Service_and_Equity>
   [6] to guide this annual plan and our organizational objectives – to
   clarify how “knowledge as a service” and “knowledge equity” can guide the
   implementation of current and future work at the Foundation.
   -

   Finally, the Wikimedia Foundation’s annual plan has often been presented
   as primarily one-way information sharing. As we more explicitly focus on
   movement strategy through this annual plan, we aspire to more deliberate
   two-way planning by asking what others who share similar goals are also
   doing. For those who are interested in trying this with us, we hope that
   more deliberate two-way planning can help better visualize the collective
   needs, efforts, and opportunities across communities and to identify
   further collaborations that could be developed or deepened by region, by
   project, or by another area of interest.

Inspired by our projects, the Foundation’s draft plan is on Meta as a
long-form text document in multiple languages. [7] We hope this format will
allow for more (and multilingual) engagement on substance and ideas, while
also communicating complexity and nuance that may be difficult to achieve
only through slides and spreadsheets. We have identified some thematic
areas, not an exhaustive list of every Foundation initiative underway now.
In some areas, we have described challenges with proposed solutions, and in
other areas we have defined experiments to simply provide a concrete
starting point for new ways of working.

Over the next month, we invite input from those who are interested on the
Meta talk page or by joining open calls being hosted in different time
zones. [8] We’ll track comments on Meta and from the calls to shape a final
document that the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees will approve in
June.

Priority 2: Leadership for our product and technology teams

I highlighted in January that CEO transitions are disruptive for most
organisations and change often continues after a new leader has arrived. One
of my most immediate tasks has been to actively step in and support the
Foundation’s Product and Technology departments while we recruit for
executive leadership of these mission critical functions. I have spent most
of my time in the first quarter with these teams, looking for opportunities
to improve our ways of working even during a period of leadership
transition.

I have also studied the history and evolution of the Foundation’s Product
and Technology departments, which were first separated in 2015. Despite
excellent work in both areas, the distance between Product and Technology
has grown in recent years. At this moment in time, we will be best served
by a single leader serving as the Wikimedia Foundation’s Chief Product &
Technology Officer to share accountability with me for how we plan and
execute our work end-to-end across product and engineering.

Hiring the right talent at this level is both art and science. So far, we
have sourced hundreds of candidates in a global search spanning the world,
although it will remain a rolling process until we find the right leader. I
hope to share more soon.

Priority 3: Our Values

My final priority has been seeking to understand how the Wikimedia
Foundation’s organizational values are lived in practice. [9] This process
remains ongoing. Over the past three months I have started by engaging the
diverse employee resource groups at the Foundation, as well as our Board of
Trustees.

Alongside this, I continue to support movement governance processes, meet
with some of our most important collaborators in the free knowledge
ecosystem, and invest in building a stronger partnership with our Trustees,
many of whom are also new to their roles. And I am still listening and
learning - thank you to those who have offered time for conversations and
to share varying perspectives. Since my arrival, I have been communicating
on a weekly basis with all Wikimedia Foundation staff and also with the
board. I welcome feedback on how often you also want to hear from me -
probably not every week!

Wishing a peaceful holiday weekend ahead for those who may be celebrating,

Maryana

Maryana Iskander

Wikimedia Foundation CEO

[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_noticeboard/14_S…

[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Chief_Executive_Office…

[3]
https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/01/28/what-does-the-world-need-from-us-now-…

[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-term_plan_2019/…

[5]

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Medium-term_plan_2019

[6]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017#Our_strate…

[7]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2022-2023/…

[8]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2022-2023/…

[9] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Values