The concept of working out loud is a great one especially when you start to add online communities into the mix.
As Dion Hinchcliffe, Author & Chief Strategy Officer points out “ "Working Out Loud, perhaps the most fundamental digital workplace skill"
So what is working out loud?
Working Out Loud is the practice of sharing work in progress with a relevant community to enable learning and collaboration.
The Five Elements of Working Out Loud are:
Relationships
Generosity
Visible Work
Purposeful Discovery
A Growth Mindset
So a great fit with online communities.
How can you get involved?
You can start by going to https://wolweek.com/about/ which will provide a lot more information about who you can get involved across your organisation.
But I thought I would pull out some of the simple steps you could try out in your online groups over the week to introduce the concept of working out loud.
But before you start putting this idea into practice, here are some of the reason that you might wish to chose to try it out in your group.
Working out loud can:
Increase membership activity due to an increase in post and responses
Increase members connections due to a sharing of common issues and the willingness to support each other.
Increase leadership engagement due to having a wider understanding of what people are doing and where they can help relieve blockages
Here is an example we have put together of how you could try out Working out load with your online group. This is based on the 5 ways to work out loud for #wolweek
Introduce working out loud to your online group
Create a group event for Working out load to introduce the concept and the benefits.
You can amend the event or create new events to help support the types of activities that you choose for your group.
Don’t forget to promote it to your group via a group announcement and send out a group message to highlight the Working out loud week.
Example Introduction text
The benefits of working out loud are:
Making your work more visible so others can help you with your work
Sharing your work with others so they can learn from your work
Using your work to expand your network through generosity
Achieve work and personal goals
We have a range of activities during the week for you to try out and for us to build a better group.
Day 1 What are your goals? Start a discussion asking your members what goals they would like to achieve in their work area and why this is important
Day 2 - What are you working on? Ask you members to share what they are working on and what process they are using to help achieve the task or tasks
Day 3 Make a contribution. This may have already started to happen where members are comments and liking the current discussions. If it needs a little help, encourage your most active members to take part (check out your forum statistics) by sharing ideas, offering help or just recognition that what they are doing is a good thing.
Day 4 Make a connection. Your members have started to talk to each other, which is a great thing. Encourage them to connect with each other as this will allow them to see when their connections are online and to use the chat function with them.
Day 5 - Reflection on the week. Summarise the great discussions that have gone on. Highlight any key actions or activities that the online group can take forward. Thank everyone for taking part. And remember it does not have to stop here.
Asking your members what they are working on, on a regular basis, always leads to great insight into the work that they are doing and where there is potential help or advice from others members that will save them time and effort.
There will be a range of activities during the week in the Online Facilitators Community using these ideas. If your a group facilitator and not a member, come and join us.
