Foreword

Katherine Maher

In 2017, the Wikimedia Foundation launched a strategic planning process to identify the future of our free knowledge movement, and a statement of what we would like to achieve by 2030. The Wikipedia vision calls for a world in which all people can participate in the sum of all knowledge. We asked ourselves: what should we do next as a movement in order to reach that aspirational vision?

We knew a traditional approach to strategy would not work for the Wikimedia movement. The answer to our questions would not be found within a business book or a boardroom. Our projects have been created by millions of volunteers over the past two decades; for a strategy to work for Wikimedia, it would have to be consistent with that approach. We would use that same collective intelligence to envision the future of free knowledge, and create not just a renewed strategy for Wikipedia but a renewed vision and alignment for the free knowledge movement.

Throughout 2017 the Wikimedia Foundation led a global movement of volunteers in the largest open global strategy consultation to ever take place. We cast a wide net that brought together our most passionate contributors alongside people who had never heard of Wikipedia. We engaged 2,000 volunteers in 20 languages and more than 50 countries, in dialogue with hundreds of institutions and individual experts, to ask: what is the future of free knowledge?

Together, we produced a series of conversations and insights that would form the basis of a unifying global strategic direction, as well as community-built recommendations for how to get there. The strategic direction we created together is better than what we could have hoped for -- To become the essential infrastructure (support system) of free knowledge, and anyone who shares our vision can join us. Aspirational but achievable, inclusive of new voices and familiar to veterans, broad enough to be adaptable to different contexts, but specific enough to enable tough decisions.

But even if our statement of direction had been slightly less good, the very process of creating it would have been worth the effort. By putting in the hours and effort, we began a process of transforming our disparate collection of communities into a globally-aligned, unified movement for free knowledge. The dialogues, debates, and the data we collected throughout our long-term planning allowed us to knit together diverse ambition into a shared sense of identity and purpose, engaged by passion and possibility.

In other words, the process is the product. By working openly together, we built connections and trust between divergent groups of stakeholders, and were able to unify our movement around a single path forward. Through meetings and events, online consultations and in person salons, we were able to create structured space for fresh voices to be heard and formalize emerging ideas. We engaged diverse groups to cooperatively identify challenges and solutions. Through the movement strategy process, we created an entirely new approach to strategy -- one that is radically open, democratic, and global, transparent and iterative -- a strategy that invited anyone to contribute, all built on the ethos of Wikipedia itself.

This playbook outlines some of the key lessons we’ve learned throughout this process on how to run an inclusive global strategy from intention to execution. Created through feedback from participants in the movement strategy process as well as the organizing team, we believe it can serve as a guide for community organizers, facilitators, and project managers on how to build a long-term vision for your organization in partnership with your community and key stakeholders. As this playbook shows, the best way to imagine and shape the future you want is to do so together.

Katherine Maher, CEO, Wikimedia Foundation, 2014 - 2021

Eero Vaara

Strategy work is at crossroads because conventional perspectives and methods are just not enough to meet the demands of today’s organizations. In particular, we need new kinds of approaches to connect with internal and external stakeholders – not only to have their voices heard but to engage them in creative thinking and committed collective action. Such an open strategy approach – which I would call Strategy Work 3.0 – is what this playbook is all about.

In this strategy playbook, we see Wikimedia pioneering something that is not easy to pull off. The key is to understand that transparency, inclusion and commitment do not happen by themselves but require a lot of work and effort. What is especially valuable is that we are offered a detailed description of the strategy process that zooms in on the practices, tools and methods used as well as the key learning points. I am also very impressed that strategy formation is linked with implementation, which remains one of the key challenges in any organization.

This is the way Wikimedia does it. We can all learn from it. It does not have to be copying all steps or using the exact same methods, but this playbook is a terrific source of best practices to be used by any kind of organization willing to take an extra step towards more participative, creative and agile strategy work.

Eero Vaara, Professor in Organisations and Impact, University of Oxford

Working Groups meeting at the Movement Strategy Space
Strategy Writing Sprint in Wikimedia Deutschland Office (Berlin), December 1st - 7th, 2019
Egypt Wikimedian UG Strategy Salon in Cairo, Egypt
East African Strategy Summit 2019 in Kampala, Wikimedia 2030, Movement Strategy
Wikimedia Strategy Salon in Rajshahi, 2019
Participants at WikiArabia 2019 in Marrakesh
Salon stratégique des membres de Wikimédia Côte d'Ivoire, Juillet 2019
Wikimedia 2030 Movement Strategy Summit, East Africa Regional event in Kampala 2019
Day 3 of Wikimedia 2030 Harmonization Sprint
ESEAP Strategy Summit Day 1 - Ryu Cheol telling something to the group

Introduction

Shaping the future of knowledge

Beginning in March 2017, the global Wikimedia movement embarked on an unprecedented experiment: they began crafting a 10-year strategic plan together. Out in the open. All conducted through an open, participatory process that brought together hundreds of people from diverse backgrounds.

“

Collective strategic planning is radical.
You have to really mean it.

”

They succeeded. In May 2020, after more than two years of open discussions, working groups and iterative drafting, participants successfully shipped 10 key strategic recommendations that will shape the future of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Movement.

This was a remarkable victory for the movement given its scale and decentralized nature. The process was orchestrated by the Strategy team, first consulting ‘Working Groups’ with members from across the movement, then getting liaisons onboard. All the while, this process was an open conversation with the community where anyone could contribute.

The recommendations touch on everything from how money and power will be distributed, to improving user experience on the platform, to prioritizing knowledge equity and inclusion.

Gathering lessons learned

As the strategic plan moves into implementation, it’s an opportunity for us to look back at our global collaboration and share some of our key lessons learned. This playbook is aimed at outlining some of those key practices and mindsets, based on what we learned from the process of creating a strategic direction and recommendations.

The content is drawn from group discussions and interviews with more than 100 different participants in the Movement Strategy Process hosted between May and June 2020.

1. Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement	2. Improve User Experience	3. Provide for Safety and Inclusion	4. Ensure Equity in Decision-making	5. Coordinate Across Stakeholders

6. Invest in Skills and Leadership Development	7. Manage Internal Knowledge	8. Identify Topics for Impact	9. Innovate in Free Knowledge	10. Evaluate, Iterate, and Adapt

The focus of the retrospectives was: “What went well? What could have gone better? And how can we improve?” Participants were invited to share their individual reflections in writing, then synthesize and discuss their answers together to help surface recommendations. Together these discussions generated more than 300 pages of feedback, which has been edited down into this report. The group discussions were facilitated by Matt Thompson, who also edited this initial draft.

To encourage candor and psychological safety, participants’ feedback was anonymous, and has not been attributed. Instead, quotes from multiple individuals have been grouped together into shared themes and a collective voice. Our hope is that the participants’ words speak for themselves, and that this report does justice to the rich insights we received from them.

Who we spoke with:

Movement Strategy Core Team
- “The Core Team was responsible for advancing the Wikimedia 2030 Movement Strategy Process, its operations, logistics, and focus. This team was made up largely from members of the broader Wikimedia movement, featuring a mix of people who worked for the Wikimedia Foundation or for Wikimedia Deutschland.” (Strategy core team)
- The Core Team included; Nicole Ebber, Kaarel Vaidla, Bhavesh Patel, Jodi McMurray, Mehrdad Pourzaki, Tanveer Hasan, Abbad Diraneyya, Kelsi Stine-Rowe, Anna Rees, Ellie McMillan
Working Group members
- “In July 2018, 90 members from our global community formed into nine Working Groups. . .Each Working Group. . .dedicated itself to one of nine key thematic areas of the movement, which members were putting under the microscope, exploring how it could look in 2030 and finalizing a set of guiding questions.” (Working Groups)
Strategy Liaisons
- “[A] point of contact for the Core Team and the Working Groups. . .act[ing] as a bridge between organized groups and the overall Movement Strategy Process” (Organizational Strategy Liaisons)
Community representatives
Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director (Katherine Maher)
Wikimedia Foundation Chief of Staff (Ryan Merkley)
Wikimedia Deutschland Executive Director (Abraham Taherivand)

Key Themes we explored:

Process Design
Community and Volunteer Engagement
Working as a distributed global team
Communications
Knowledge Management
Operational Infrastructure