Reading/Strategy/Strategy Process

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ABOUT

Last week, some members of the reading team spent two days learning how to go through the exercise of "playing to win" methodology of strategy. The meeting, by all means, was not set or designed to come up with a strategy for the movement in two days, in a closed room, by less than a dozen of people - the focus was on learning how to go through the thinking process, how to evaluate our concerns, and how we cascade our choices and solutions for suggested issues. The Reading department is relatively new, with mostly remote staff. Coming together to learn through the exercise was an important step towards systematizing the planning process and aligning the ideas moving forward. You can check the Q&A for further questions.

HOW THE PROCESS WORKS

 * Defining problems,
 * Bucketing,
 * Picking one problem to go through
 * Generating choices for how to over come the problem
 * Generating possibilities that each could choice entail
 * Narrowing down possibilities
 * Defining obstacles that would make the assumed possibilities not effective
 * Designing tests to evaluate obstacles

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Step 1: IDENTIFYING ISSUES
For starters the team started by brainstorming pressing issues. In less than 30 minutes a whole wall was already covered with problems. Below is the list. It is understandable that lots of might be brought up. However, due to the nature of the problems, some issues are long standing and crystal clear, or else, qualitative rather than quantitative


 * Identity crisis around reference versus learning XYZ
 * We don’t manage change well XYZ
 * Balancing resourcing, innovation, and maintenance XYZ
 * We are bad with people: communicating and listening. We don’t understand our community of different users XYZ XYZ XYZ
 * Because of how giant we are, we struggle to scale. XYZ
 * Our decline in North America traffic endangers our fund raising model XYZ XYZ
 * Lack of shared understanding around primary stakeholders XYZ XYZ
 * We have a mentality of “Us + Them” XYZ XYZ XYZ XYZ
 * Being both a tech company + non-profit is challenging XYZ XYZ
 * Factionalism within the foundation + the movement makes it hard to collaborate XYZ XYZ XYZ
 * No framework to gracefully handle tension in our world XYZ XYZ
 * As a Reading team we lack diversity XYZ XYZ
 * Lack of understanding around reader/editor relationship XYZ XYZ
 * Not effective at problem solving with community XYZ XYZ
 * We have only one way for users to consume content XYZ XYZ
 * Foundation fails to support non-encylopedia projects and we are wasting opportunities XYZ XYZ
 * Not doing a good job in partnerships XYZ XYZ
 * Not playing in the education space, which means our competition occupies and takes away from us XYZ
 * We lack a lean-back experience XYZ
 * The web is changing and we don’t have a clear understanding of our place XYZ
 * People in other countries are not aware of Wikipedia XYZ XYZ
 * Goals of editors and readers are not always the same XYZ
 * The web has new contribution/presentation methods that are not present in Wikimedia XYZ XYZ XYZ
 * People feel unsure about the quality and accuracy of our info XYZ
 * Our technical platform needs investment in order to reflect user expectations XYZ XYZ
 * Proprietary web trends marginalize us and lock us out of potential markets and conflict with our values XYZ XYZ
 * We don’t participate in the creation of standards XYZ
 * We’re not engaged in the conversations around open standards XYZ XYZ
 * Competition is better at presenting information XYZ
 * We don’t serve our users who don’t speak English XYZ XYZ
 * Other channels and formats are diverting attention XYZ
 * Audiences might veer towards more passive/distracting/trivial activities XYZ XYZ
 * We don’t optimize content for learning across different audiences and different needs XYZ
 * No obvious way for readers to engage in knowledge contribution XYZ
 * We are not playing (visible) in important spaces - educational search engines, social, etc. XYZ
 * People aren’t reaching us because of intermediaries (other platforms) XYZ
 * Dealing with decline of desktop web XYZ XYZ
 * Our content is being consumed without participation back XYZ XYZ
 * Readers don’t understand how Wikipedia works XYZ
 * The world needs better access to open knowledge to deal with pressing issues of the day XYZ
 * Wikipedia has failed to become relevant on mobile presentation-wise XYZ
 * People need trusted, easy-to-understand information that could impact quality of life XYZ
 * Wikipedia is not seen as an authoritative source XYZ
 * We don’t have partners XYZ
 * We don’t know what we should partner on XYZ
 * Too many possible partnerships XYZ
 * We don’t partner with the largest syndicator of our content in a measurable, impactful way XYZ
 * Users are not reaching us and the web is getting more closed XYZ
 * Third parties may be diluting our content XYZ XYZ
 * We know there are pipelines but not how to leverage them XYZ
 * Not enough local content XYZ
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Step 2: CLUSTERING:
The eight themes emerged from the above problems those where:
 * style="background:MediumSeaGreen"| Lack of feedback loops that effectively incorporate a variety of users
 * style="background:IndianRed"|We don’t have a shared vision for the next generation of user experiences
 * style="background:SandyBrown"|Lost opportunities when users access content through third parties
 * style="background:Teal"|We don't understand our variety of community of users
 * style="background:SteelBlue"|External Perception: people don't understand how Wikipedia works
 * style="background:Gray"|Organizational Capacity problems and lack of efficient framework of collective decision making
 * style="background:RosyBrown"|The web is changing while squashing our values
 * style ="background:DarkSlateBlue"|Our core capabilities, infrastructures, and workflows are not optimized for emerging platforms, experiences, and communities
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Step 3: PARTIALLY COMPLETING THE PROCESS ON ONE THEME: Our core capabilities, infrastructures, and workflows are not optimized for emerging platforms, experiences, and communities
The process requires constructing distinct choices to solve the issue, and then deriving possible ways of solving the issue. After describing possible ways of solving the issue, the process requires further exploration about what would need to be true about the industry, customers, capabilities and cost model relative to other players, and the reaction of other players. The following table describes just one potential choice. During the face to face session, the team delved more deeply into just a couple of relatively simpler possibilities from the table:


 * Focus on improving our end user experiences Possibility 1: enable readers to share content to read inside and outside Wikis


 * Focus on enabling others to improve end user experiences Possibility 1: Set of pre-built content for embedding existing Wikimedia content.

These two possibilities are by no means complete strategies in their own right. The team will explore more possibilities. And of possibilities that appear viable as part of a cohesive strategy, the team will construct cascades about the markets, products, capabilities, and management systems required to support such possibilities, as well as some lightweight tests that can be conducted to reasonably determine the viability of the possibilities. *Project agnostic:
 * width="305" style="background:DarkSlateGray" align="center"|PROBLEM || width="370" style="background:DarkSlateGray" align="center"|CHOICES || width="370" style="background:DarkSlateGray"  align="center"|POSSIBILITIES
 * rowspan="2" width="305" style="background:SlateGray" align="center" |Our core capabilities, infrastructures, and workflows are not optimized for emerging platforms, experiences, and communities || width="305" align="center" style="background:SlateGray" |Focus on improving our end user experiences.|| width="305" style="background:SlateGray"|
 * Amazing mobile lookup experience (fast, accurate) for mass market in global north.
 * Optimize experience for users coming from specific referrers (eg. Google, etc)
 * Make a kick ass long form reading experience.
 * Restructure display to focus on media.
 * Strengthen dev advocacy to engage U/X + developer experts to improve reading UX.
 * Enable readers to share content to read inside and outside Wikis
 * Stop focusing on search and emphasize discovery/browsing in UI.
 * Leverage communities to organize related content to create deep-dive educational experience.
 * Create new reading experience tailored for users in the global south.
 * width="305" align="center" style="background:SlateGray" |Focus on enabling others to improve end user experiences. || style="background:SlateGray"|
 * Set of pre-built content for embedding existing Wikimedia content.
 * Grant rich/deep access to inform - platform/tools beyond scope of general reference.
 * WMF-as-a-service: spin WP into its own entity and all/any projects become customers of the service.
 * WMF encourages an ecosystem of frontend experimentation.
 * WMF supports 3rd party dev/design of WMF incubated projects.
 * WMF-as-a-service: spin WP into its own entity and all/any projects become customers of the service.
 * WMF encourages an ecosystem of frontend experimentation.
 * WMF supports 3rd party dev/design of WMF incubated projects.

1.Become THE broker of open access data, targeting specific channel partners.

2.Messaging apps/platforms.

3.Media companies

4.Platform companies

5.Specific verticals (eg. medical specific wikis)

6.Including the existing communities

7.The more data we broker, the more durable


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Next Steps:
Follow the process, and for our targeted problem think of possible choices. For Every choice, generate a number of possibilities that the choice entails. After than, design tests to verify concerns against possibilities.
 * Lets carry on the process together: