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User:Slowking4/Why i think Narrowing focus is a strategic mistake

< User:Slowking4
(English) This is an essay. It expresses the opinions and ideas of some Wikimedians but may not have wide support. This is not policy on Meta, but it may be a policy or guideline on other Wikimedia projects. Feel free to update this page as needed, or use the discussion page to propose major changes.
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sitrep

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mission

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  • vision:
    • Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment. [1]
  • mission:
    • The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.
      In collaboration with a network of chapters, the Foundation provides the essential infrastructure and an organizational framework for the support and development of multilingual wiki projects and other endeavors which serve this mission. The Foundation will make and keep useful information from its projects available on the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity. [2]

History

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Jennifer Riggs 2009

axiom

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  • wikimedia is a volunteer organization, with a supporting non-profit foundation.
  • software is an enabler; grants are a funding mechanism, not a vision or mission.
  • content is written by people volunteers
  • Systems Have Their Place: SECOND Place
    • hard is soft; soft is hard
    • "I came to see in my time at IBM that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game—it is the game.”
    • “Some people look for things that went wrong and try to fix them. I look for things that went right, and try to build off them.”
  • human resource management will be a critical skill to manage productivity of people
    • narrowing focus shows an institutional bias to do the comfortable coding, rather than the icky soft human resource management.
    • non-profit management is too important a topic to be left to amateurs

strategy

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  • what are the steps to do mission?
  • what are the steps taken to empower and engage people?
  • what are the programs and methodologies?
  • what steps are taken to enable people to succeed?
  • empower does not mean throwing people in the river to see if they will swim; giving people tools and see what they will do with them.
  • empower and engage people means training in organizational behavior, teaming, and people management skills to meet the mission and vision.
  • empower means creating a human system where people can succeed; (when people fail, perhaps it is a systemic failure.)
  • engage people means authentic interaction with people, not canned templates, or messages, or decision trees
  • engage does not mean changing the wording of the warning templates, or changing the user decision tree
  • what are the specific teams, methods, and plan to empower and engage?

examples

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