Reposted from LeaderTalk.org.

Over the last few months, I’ve been experimenting with wikis. As a district administrator, I have fun keeping track of hundreds of documents that find their way into my inbox, that get “locked up” on my hard drive. Often, these documents are not confidential, should be looked at by lots of people. Yet, since email is the “killer app” that we’ve all grown old with, we find ourselves with more in our inbox than we can delete.

If you find those characterizations to be true of your inbox, then you may find this next one to be even more apt. Documents that are attached to your emails eventually take over your email backups. You start to wonder, where can I put that valuable document? You realize that your email program become the primary way you interact with information. After all, it’s easier to keep documents in your email than save them to folders on your hard drive. You put a document on your hard drive, and then you may spend some time looking for it. Even though there are hard drive utilities to find stuff, only the techies know how to install them.

A few months ago, I decided to change that. I began to put non-confidential documents into a wiki. The power of the wiki is that I can continue to move content around, reorganize it easily, and better yet, leverage my secretary’s organizational skills. Once my secretary–an excellent organizer–learned how to use the wiki, I began to point those emails with documents to her. “Would you please post this on the wiki in the appropriate place?” I’d ask. After a light chuckle–she allows herself these laughs at my expense–she would put the documents online.

Now, I’m beginning to find that the wiki is THE heart of my document management. And, I’ve started keeping my meeting notes there, as well as works in progress. I’m meeting with the technical crew on campus vs district server options. My job in the group is to craft the executive summary (oh boy, you should see those…need one for every project prior to approval) that we’ll submit to the higher-ups. What do you know, planning it all out there makes the work transparent.

Transparency. Yes, that’s what I’m really striving for. I never know what might happen to me on my home from work. Now, I know that should something happen, my team, those I work with, my supervisors can find out exactly what I’m working on, the documents relevant to that, and more.

You can check out my budding wiki here.

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure