Hi Aubrey,
Thanks for passing that along.
As it turns out, we spent some time at the NYPL talking about strategy at
the Board retreat this November. The Board sat down with Tony Ageh, their
new Chief Digital Officer, to have an informal conversation about how
Wikimedia, the NYPL, and other organizations can continuously reinvigorate
their mission as their medium, audience, and purposes evolve. We didn't
talk about the process from that article specifically (Tony wasn't there in
2014) but more about forward-looking work. Speaking for myself, it was an
interesting conversation full of relevant historical analogies, set in a
memorable venue (the reading room).
I look forward to reading the article in full.
Cheers,
Katherine
On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 01:54 Andrea Zanni <zanni.andrea84(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Katherine, thanks for the email.
Regarding the external expert for inclusive process you are looking for,
maybe this article is of help:
https://hbr.org/2016/12/how-employees-shaped-strategy-at-the
-new-york-public-library
I'm posting here for everyone to see because I think is interesting for
everybody to understand
how other (similar?) communities do innovation and shape their strategy.
Regards
Aubrey
On Fri, Dec 16, 2016 at 3:42 AM, Katherine Maher <kmaher(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
*(Apologies for cross posting)*
Hi all,
Since joining the Wikimedia Foundation and
movement in 2014, I have often
heard community members, movement organizations,
and staff members speak
of
a need for a clear, unifying, and inspirational
strategic direction for
our
movement. These conversations tend to follow a
pattern: they start by
recognizing the incredible work of our movement
over the past 15 years,
while seeking clarity on what we do next. What do
we want to achieve over
the next 15 years? What role do we want to play
in the world? How will we
prioritize our work and resources?
At the June 2016 Board of Trustees meeting, the
Board identified[1] the
development of a long-term movement strategy as
one of our top priorities
for the coming year. Coming to consensus on a
long-term strategic
direction
will help us know where we are headed, which path
we will take, and how
we
will ensure our work is supported.
At the Foundation’s December metrics meeting this
morning, Anna Stillwell
and Lisa Gruwell shared a presentation on the
work the Foundation has
done
since June to prepare for a movement strategy
consultation in the coming
year.[2] We have been working to understand past
Wikimedia strategy
efforts, estimate future budgets and timelines,
and secure resources for
the year to come. In this email, I want to
present some additional detail
on this progress, and next steps we can take
together.
(*Fair warning: this is a very long email.* The
critical information is
as
follows: The Wikimedia Foundation Board has
approved a spending
resolution
and timeline for the upcoming strategy work. We
anticipate beginning
broad
community conversations on the process, goals,
and themes in early 2017.
The Foundation is looking for an external expert
to work with us
(community
and staff) to support an effective, inclusive
process. I’ve been remiss
in
regular updates, but we will share them going
forward. And of course,
please share your thoughts and feedback on this
list and on Meta [3].)
*Strategic direction*
We are expecting that we will begin a
movement-wide strategy discussion
in
early 2017, with a process that runs throughout
the year. The goal is to
close 2017 with clarity and consensus on a
strategic direction for our
movement, and begin planning for how we will make
progress in that
direction.
We are currently doing good work across our
movement, but lack a unifying
sense of how that work coheres into something
greater than its individual
parts. Wikipedia and the sister projects are
remarkable, and our
community
is responsible for their success. Our movement
has done an incredible job
spreading our values and principles around the
world—but we often look
backwards to improve on our past, rather than
looking fully at both our
past and future. There’s an opportunity for us to
consider how our vision
and mission will remain current amidst changing
media, demographics, and
technology, and how we can better coalesce our
efforts (ecosystem of
affiliates, users, experts, new users, cultural
and educational
institutions, and the Wikimedia Foundation).
Additionally, we (community, affiliates, Board,
and staff) are
increasingly
aware of the challenges which arise without a
unified movement strategy.
We
have heard from members of the FDC, grant
applicants, community leaders,
and a growing number of affiliates that they at
times struggle with
understanding how our separate efforts tie
together and where we are
going
as an overall movement. The absence of a movement
strategy, in other
words,
is hampering our ability to work toward our
mission. Given the importance
of that mission, and the need to hold ourselves
to the highest account on
responsible stewardship of donor resources, this
is an expensive
opportunity cost.
*Budget*
At the June Board meeting, I committed to develop
a proposed process and
budget in time for the Board’s annual November
Board retreat. This
process
would reflect the type of approach we might take,
and be accompanied by
an
estimated budget for the associated work.
To prepare, we wanted to understand past efforts
at developing strategies
for our movement. We audited these past processes
(2010, 2012/Narrowing
Focus, 2014, and some other efforts) and
interviewed past participants to
learn what worked and what did not,[4] and took
stock of what was
missing—from external expertise to audience
research—to clear ownership
of
outcomes.
We recognized that, for example, while the 2010
process was highly
collaborative, it had some notable challenges.
For example, it was unable
to turn collaborative goal setting into shared
ownership of the work
needed
to reach those goals. It also did not have strong
participation from
emerging communities, particularly those in
countries outside of Europe
and
North America. For movement planning to succeed
in the future, we will
need
both broad and deep participation, from various
perspectives and
languages.
To consider how we could realize this level of
meaningful consultation,
we
spoke to people in the Foundation’s Community
Engagement team and
elsewhere, taking recommendations on everything
from community toolkits
and
convenings to multilingual translation.
Past processes have also often focused on
qualitative perspectives,
usually
of our existing communities of editors and
readers. We have had limited
ways of understanding how broadly representative
these experiences,
needs,
and challenges were, even for our existing
communities. We have tens of
thousands of editors, but even in our most
collaborative effort in 2010,
only 2,000 people contributed to the strategic
discussions. Similarly, we
have limited research about why and how people
around the world use and
engage with the Wikimedia projects as
non-editors—and our understanding
about what keeps people from using the projects,
as editors or
non-editors,
is highly qualitative.
As we engage in the consultation going forward,
we see an opportunity to
bring substantive audience-based research into
our discussion, to inform
our possibilities and challenges with good data.
We worked with the
Global
Reach team, and staff from the New Readers and
Audience Research projects
to scope out qualitative and quantitative
audience research in new,
emerging, and existing editor and reader
communities, and estimate
associated budgets. And while we see this as an
exciting opportunity to
incorporate new data into our conversations, we
also expect it to have
lasting value beyond the coming year. Good
audience research and data
will
help inform not just strategy discussions, but
also should be helpful for
Foundation and other product and programming
decisions now and in the
future.
And of course, we are not alone in the world! We
exist in an ecosystem of
people who use, reuse, and remix the knowledge on
the Wikimedia projects
in
all sorts of ways. We have a strong and growing
community of institutions
and partners in education, government, culture,
and the sciences. We also
have many technical partners and re-users who
have a vested interest in
our
health. These stakeholders offer valuable insight
into how our work
extends
into the world, well beyond the sites we run. We
want to talk to them,
understand the opportunities they see in the
future, and the challenges
they face today. We want to speak to people
working at the edge of
innovation in technology, to better understand
how these trends affect
our
future, and to engage them in our mission.
And last, but certainly not least, these
discussions, collaborations, and
conclusions need to be open and consultative. We
want to work together to
design a process of consultation, with
opportunities for on-wiki
conversation, face to face meetings, working
groups, and more. In some
cases, this may mean new conversations, and in
others, we may want to
bring
additional capacity and participation to already
scheduled community
events. We will need additional resources for
multilingual facilitation,
or
documentation. We will also need additional
capacity to support these
discussions, so that community and staff alike
can retain their focus on
the programs, grants, and product work to which
they have committed.
We want to bring this to life. But before we
could commit to this
approach,
we needed to be sure we could assemble the
appropriate resources to make
it
happen. Based on our research into past
processes, best practices, and
conversations with community and staff—we built a
high-level estimated
budget with resources for the following:
inclusive, multilingual
community
consultation on-wiki and in-person; research into
our users, new users,
and
consultation with external experts and
stakeholders; and additional
external capacity for management and production
of the process. All in,
we
estimate that the full scope of work over 1.5
years will cost somewhere
around US$2.5 million. This is divided out
roughly as 35% support for
direct community participation, 35% support for
audience research and
understanding external ecosystems, and 30%
support for facilitation and
external support.
I know this sounds like a lot! As we break it
down into budget lines, it
starts to become more tangible. This estimated
budget was developed in
close consultation with the Community Engagement,
Global Reach, and
Finance
teams. We worked with the Community Engagement
team to use their models
for
community events and facilitation to budget for
additional support and
participation in community events. We worked with
the Global Reach team
to
estimate the costs of qualitative and
quantitative research around the
world. And we worked with the Finance teams to
understand hourly rates
for
non-profit strategic consultancies (finding that,
even with non-profit
organizations our commitment to meaningful
consultation quickly added
many
hours to our planning).
An overview of this budget estimate was presented
to the Board at the 13
November Board meeting. There the Board approved
a spending resolution of
up to $2.5 million over Fiscal Year 2016-17 (July
2016 - June 2017) and
Fiscal Year 2017-18 (July 2017 - June 2018). We
are currently working to
migrate this proposed budget into a format
similar to the one we use for
Annual Planning, for the purpose of consistency
and clarity of review.
This
detailed budget, tied to specific events,
contracts, and research areas,
will be shared with to the Foundation Board’s
Audit Committee[5], and
with
the greater communities for feedback.
*Assembling a team*
To increase our likelihood of success, we want to
bring additional
capacity
and expertise to the table. No single Wikimedia
Foundation department or
Wikimedia movement affiliate currently has the
complete skillset or
available capacity to independently manage a
strategy process of this
size
and scale. Our goal is to find an external entity
with experience in
organizational or movement strategies to help
move us all (affiliates,
current users, new users, experts, cultural and
educational institutions,
community committees, and Wikimedia Foundation)
toward collaborative
development of a movement strategy, and
assembling a team to support this
process.
Practically, this means finding an entity capable
of recommending a
strategic approach, identifying necessary inputs
(e.g., user research or
sector mapping) to inform meaningful consultation
and decision making,
making timely process against deadlines, and
helping ensure the delivery
of
the final work. We’re referring to this role as
the “lead architect,”
although it is likely to be a team, rather than
an individual.
We recognize that several individuals in our
community already possess
significant expertise in strategic planning, and
we hope you will
contribute your talents to the shape and content
of the discussion. We
also
recognize it can be difficult to both facilitate
a conversation and
contribute to it at the same time. To help
alleviate procedural and
operational pressures on community contributors,
and enable people to
participate in primarily strategic and generative
roles, we expect the
lead
architect and team will work closely with
existing community and staff
liaisons and advocates to support discussions as
facilitators. They will
be
expected to support any community and Wikimedia
Foundation bodies
involved
in the development of strategy.
Last month, I asked Lisa Gruwell, Anna Stillwell,
and Guillaume Paumier
to
begin a search for this external capacity. They
spoke with a number of
smaller organizations—a deliberate choice, to
find someone who could be
flexible and open to our needs—and put together a
request for proposal
(RFP) for interested firms. The minimal criteria
for the lead architect
is
someone who:
- Has created successful strategies before
(organizational or movement
strategies, rather than just a strategy for a
department, a program,
or
a
product)
- Has proposed a coherent outcome and
understands the need to build an
incredibly inclusive process
- Is willing to be paired with a full-time
partner/advisor who knows
the
movement well
- Has significant nonprofit experience
- Has significant international experience
- Understands that Wikimedia communities are
passionate! There will be
an occasional raucous[6] debate. They must be
willing and able to have
difficult conversations (difficult in
substance, but not in tone).
Although we spoke to many firms that were
interested, some were unable to
mobilize resources on our timeline. Others we
didn’t feel were the right
fit. In the end, we received two viable
responses. We are hoping to make
a
decision by the end of this or next week.
We recognize that our movement, mission, and
culture are wonderfully
idiosyncratic. While we know we need external
skills in the area of
movement strategies, we also know that any
external organization will
need
extensive support understanding our movement
values, culture, history,
and
projects.
We are proposing pairing any external consultants
with community and
staff
members who have deep community experience as
guides, translators, and
mentors. We don’t know exactly how we will work
yet, or who will be
interested in playing these roles. This is one
question of many we will
need to answer together.
*Next steps*
All the resource and planning progress in the
world doesn’t get us far
without community conversation. Beyond the
budget, the decision to bring
in
additional expertise, and the timeline of the
coming year, we don’t have
many more concrete details at this point. That’s
intentional. We are
committed to developing the specifics in
partnership with you as we move
forward.
We also recognize we are embarking on something
new. We’re proposing a
model that, while based on research, past
experience, extensive
conversations, and a detailed budget—may not be
perfect. We welcome the
ideas you bring to make it stronger. We
anticipate we will work in the
open, communicate among ourselves regularly,
pause along the way to
assess
our progress, and course-correct as necessary.
This will be part of
building together.
Additionally, we’ll be providing regular
documentation via email, and
adding it to Meta-Wiki.[7] If you would like to
receive updates via your
user talk page, you can do so by signing up on
Meta-Wiki.[8]
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for
reading. I imagine this is the
start of many conversations. I look forward to
them.
Thank you!
Katherine
PS. An on-wiki version of this message is
available for translation:
movement/2017/Updates/15_December_2016_-_Update_1_on_
Wikimedia_movement_strategy_process
June/084627.html
[2]
metrics_and_activities_meetings/2016-12
[4]
movement/2017/Audit_of_past_strategy_processes
[8]
movement/2017/Updates/Signup
--
Katherine Maher
Wikimedia Foundation
149 New Montgomery Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
+1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635
<(415)%20839-6885>
+1 (415) 712 4873 <(415)%20712-4873>
kmaher(a)wikimedia.org
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