All modern businesses run on information, so business management is also about Information Management. However, software alone cannot transform an organization. Information Management mastery doesn't come from technology, it comes from the people! More specifically, it comes down to the CEO instilling an Information Culture for staff to follow. It's leadership not by force, but by example.

In his Management 2.0 challenge, Gary Hamel claims that blogs and wikis haven't changed the way in which organizations are managed and led. This may be the general case, but fortunately there are some companies in which such information tools have successfully changed the way companies are run.

One such company is Atlassian, an Australian software company and previous winner of the HCI Human Capital M-Prize. Atlassian's CEOs have instilled an information culture throughout the company with the core value of "Open Company, No Bullshit". The result is a bottom-up democracy of information where information sharing is the norm and information hoarding is a foreign concept.

(Click here to see the video in Full HD.)

Context

The goals of Information Management cannot be achieved by software alone. More important is a company's Work Culture that encourages workers to share information so that they are happy to "put information out there" for others to consume rather than hoarding it in their private stores.

That aspect is so important that, rather than referring to 'Information Management', it is better to consider a company's Information Culture that includes people as well as systems.

Numerous academic studies have examined the relationship between Information Culture and corporate success:

"Culture and quality in information services are positively related to performance."

— Lars Höglund, A Case Study of Information Culture and Organizational Climates (1998)
University of Borås. Swedish School of Library and Information Science

“Information culture is a strategic goal and should be planned for as much as the transformation of physical resources.”

— Ginman, Information Culture and Business Performance (1988)
International Association of Technological University Libraries (IATUL) Quarterly

“Effective information management is how people use information, not machines.”

— Thomas H. Davenport, Saving IT’s Soul: Human-Centered Information Management (1994)
Harvard Business Review, March-April 1994

A study in Finland (Owens, Wilson and Abell 1995) found a direct relationship between a company's Information Ethos (as they called it), the effectiveness of the company's Information Systems and company performance. More specifically, they recognised that the CEO was the one person who could bring change to "foster an information culture" within the organization:

Thus, any company seeking to improve its management of information should first examine its own corporate culture.

Triggers

In 2003, when Atlassian was growing its software development business, the founders wanted an online system to store their company knowledge and documentation. Whilst they realized that a wiki was an ideal platform, wikis at the time were still experimental and not ready for corporate use. So, they developed their own "corporate wiki" for internal use and also offered it for sale. The product was given the name "Confluence" to represent the coming-together of ideas.

Introducing wiki technology when the company was still young had a profound impact on Atlassian's information culture. Whereas most companies have embedded, legacy information systems that hinder the introduction of newer technology, Atlassian had the benefit of adopting a wiki early in its corporate lifecycle.

New staff members joining the company are instructed to use the wiki and, without the infrastructure for traditional 'document management', these staff members have little alternative but 'buy into' the system.

The very act of using a wiki, with its easy access to information and default 'open' nature of information, led to an information culture in Atlassian of openness and sharing.

Key Innovations & Timeline

1. Core Value: "Open Company, No Bullshit"

From the very beginning, Atlassian founders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar had a firm belief in having an 'Open Company'. Unlike other companies that kept information in silos, their vision has always been of a company that has open information by default. This includes both internal and external information:

Internal Shared Information	External Public Information
Business plans Product plans Technical documentation Online discussions Comments and critiques Customer feedback Reporting	Pricing Documentation Free product evaluations Source code Product bugs Product feature requests Company blog

Where ever possible, information is made accessible to all staff:

Instead of sending person-to-person emails, relevant information is placed on the wiki for all staff to read
Instead of storing information in documents (eg Word files), information is entered directly onto the wiki so that it is searchable and accessible to all staff — even from home!
New staff members, upon joining the company, have immediate access to all historical information kept on the wiki

This practice has been codified into the company value of "Open Company, No Bullshit". This is not a corporate edict — the value was documented by staff as describing the actual company culture at Atlassian.

Example: "Blog It!"

Several weeks after joning Atlassian, I wanted to let my manager know what I had been doing. So, I documented my work in an email and sent it to him. I received a 2-word response: "Blog It!"

From that day on, I publish my activity, and that of my team, to the entire company. Moreso, I recently had a new staff member join the company. When he sent me an email documenting his work, I echoed my ealier experience and told him to "Blog It!"

2. Online Collaboration

Wiki technology is largely about creating, editing and viewing information quickly within a web browser. However, an often-overlooked aspect of wikis is the ability to comment, which provides a means of collaborating around information.

Atlassian staff routinely add comments on wiki pages. Examples are:

Contributing ideas to project plans
Critiquing information on the wiki (which often leads to lively online debate!)
Linking to other related information, either elsewhere on the wiki or out to the Internet
Arguing the merits of HR sick leave policies that require medical certificates
Generally interacting with other staff, even if they are in a remote office or working from home

This ability to comment has led to staff actively participating within the wiki. The wiki is no longer just a repository of information — it is a destination for lively discussion and debate. Plus, since this takes place on a central system rather than in private emails, the discussions and debates are available for all staff to read and extend.

The wiki automatically notifies staff if somebody has commented on a page they created, or if somebody replied to a comment they made. This encourages staff to revisit the wiki many times each day, hastening the pace of discussion. It's much like receiving a Facebook notification when somebody has commented on your 'personal wall', except that the wall is for the whole company.

Example: Remote Collaboration

Atlassian has offices in Sydney, San Francisco and Amsterdam. This makes it very hard for everybody to participate in face-to-face meetings. However, the ability to 'comment' on the wiki means that all staff can join a conversation, regardless of location and timezone.

A recent example was when Chris Darroch, an Atlassian staff member, suggested that the IT department implement a new IT system for quickly answering questions within the company. However, this would have overlapped the goal of several existing systems, so we suggested that he put his idea on the wiki and see what other people think.

Staff from throughout the company had the chance to comment on his idea and offer alternative proposals. These alternatives were so good that Chris, himself, ended up voting against his own decision!

3. Reading the corporate news

Consider the old philosophical riddle that asks: "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" A modern equivalent might be "If information is on a computer system and no one uses it, is it of value?"

To ensure that information is publicised and read, all Atlassian staff are expected to read a "New Feed" that continuously lists all information updated on the wiki. Each staff member can personalise this Feed to obtain information relevant to their needs.

The news feed has several advantages:

Replacing 'all-hands' emails: Important information is placed on the wiki rather than in emails, which means there is a permanent, accessible historical record rather than having information stored in personal email in-boxes
Giving an 'overview' of pages and comments: Staff aren't expected to read every page and every comment on the wiki. The news feed provides a quick list of these topics, enabling staff to pick and choose what they wish to read. They can even see 'hot topics' that generate lots of comments and then join the discussion.
Allowing staff to monitor the company as a whole: Emails and distribution lists usually target a small set of people. In contrast, the news feed allows staff to 'monitor' the whole company, remaining aware of news, discussions and hot topics in other departments and other office locations.

Example: Founder Updates

Atlassian's founders publish a bi-weekly 'Update' to the company covering news, corporate stragegy and giving examples of great customer customer. Rather than sending this via email, it is published on the wiki and a "share notice" is sent to all staff, linking back to the wiki. This way, the information is centrally available even to staff who join the company in later years. Plus, staff can add their own comments to the Update and add their own local examples of great customer service. It gives a 'voice' to the entire company.

4. Internal Blogging

Blogs are now common on the Internet. Atlassian maintains numerous 'public' blogs to inform customers and business partners about company activities. However, it is the use of internal blogs that truly contributes to information sharing.

An internal blog post is just like any other wiki page — it can contain information, graphics, comments and it appears automatically in the news feed. The difference, however, is that every staff member has their own 'personal' blog that is only available internally, rather than publicly. They can write a blog post about any topic. This can relate to their work within the company, but just as often it is not directly work-related. It could be:

A programming conundrum or a tidbit of information
A report on a recent customer visit
A request for advice on holiday destinations
A proposal to shake-up the way the company sells its products
A pointer to an interesting article on the Internet

Many companies provide "bulletin board"-type systems to their employees for non-work topics, but such systems are infrequently used. However, by combining this 'personal' information exchange with the general flow of corporate knowledge, Atlassian has produced an open information exchange that is highly visible and frequently referenced by all staff. Sitting at one's desk can be the easiest way to share information.

Example: Thanks for Coming In!

One day, Atlassian staffer Michael Knighten posted a blog that he had noticed that a lot of people are happy to complain about things but seldom take the time to say Thank You. So, he posted "This is just my friendly reminder to tell the people around you they're doing an awesome job every chance you get. Doesn't cost you anything - makes them feel better, guaranteed!"

This produced a great deal of online discussion and resulted in one of Atlassian's famous T-shirts that simply reads "Thanks for coming in today!". The sentiments expressed were made doubly genuine by the fact that it was staff themselves saying Thank You rather than management. Blogging encourages multi-directional communication, rather than just top-down.

5. External Openness

The above examples are all internally-focussed, but openness at Atlassian extends externally, too (see "External Public Information" in the table earlier in this section). This openness sets Atlassian apart from its competitors in the Enterprise Software marketplace.

Under the belief that customers would also benefit from Open Information, Atlassian has implemented very specific ways of sharing information with customers, prospective customers and even prospective employees:

Product pricing is totally public, including discount policies
Prospective customers can download our software and try it free for 30 days
All documentation is public and available for anyone to access
Bug reports and feature requests are public, allowing people to 'vote' on their preferred features

This contrasts remarkably with company that merely publish Marketing information on their website, requiring all sales to be performed via a "Contact Us" button. It requires a strong conviction that our products are high quality, since customers will judge their worth before paying any money.

Example: Security Breach

In April 2010, Atlassian experienced a security breach which led to systems being shutdown while information was verified and while we made sure that no confidential customer information was stolen. Rather than keeping secret about the incident, Atlassian made regular public announcements about what had happened and how cusotmers could avoid similar security breaches.

Rather than being panned by the community for allowing such a breach to occur, the IT community gave Atlassian a resounding vote of confidence for its openness: "Clearly a case of transparency turning a disaster into an opportunity, and how to take advantage of that opportunity by being open and honest with your users."

Challenges & Solutions

Challenge 1: Instilling the practices

Writing wiki pages, comments and blogs is contrary to the traditional work practice of writing documents and communicating via email. This poses a challenge of how to indoctrinate new staff in information openness.

Atlassian's solution lies in one simple rule — on an employee's first day at work, they must create an internal blog post to introduce themselves to the company. This can range from a simple "hello" to a full editorial on their background and experience.

The most popular introductory blog posts are ones that reveal the 'personal side' of the new employee, such as their favorite hobbies or travels abroad. This then results in other staff adding comments to the blog post, welcoming the new staff member to Atlassian and often asking questions about their hobbies and trips. This creates a safe forum for the new staff member to participate in the online discussion, much like friendly dinner-party conversation. It also draws the new staff member into the wider conversation, making online participation part of their daily routine.

Challenge 2: Learning the new medium

Many people are familiar with wikis through Wikipedia. However, reading a wiki page is not the same as writing a wiki page. Facing a blank wiki page is quite disconcerting for new wiki users and they are often unsure of how to write a useful page.

Atlassian's solution is two-fold: Providing training and having rich examples.

Training is provided in how to create wiki pages. Experience has shown that, if somebody accumulates two hours of practice, they will be willing to use the wiki and expand their use of it. Without such exposure, however, people may shy away and return to their previous practices. It has been especially noted that staff in less-technical departments (eg Finance or HR) typically need more 'hand-holding' to help them through the initial learning curve.

Fortunately, the corporate wiki has been established for many years, so there are also many rich examples of how to use the wiki. Rather than starting a page from scratch, they can locate a similar page (eg meeting minutes or a project plan), copy it and then edit it for their needs. Such 'templating' means they rarely have to create a page from scratch.

Challenge 3: Too much information

One downside of having a frequently-updated wiki is that it can generate "too much information", making it hard for staff to keep current with all topics. This runs the risk of staff missing important information that is hidden amongst 'less important' information.

Atlassian overcomes this by using a 'Share' button on the wiki, which sends an email notification about a page on the wiki. This notification can be sent to one person, a few people or even the whole company. However, the email does not contain the information itself — it simply redirects staff back to the wiki where they can read the information and participate in a discussion online.

Benefits & Metrics

Benefits derived from use of the wiki include:

Online collaboration to share ideas around a topic
Historical information accessible to all staff, including new-starters
A central repository of information without the need to send documents, compare versions and distribute updates
Easy information searching as all information is kept in one system
An open information culture that encourages staff to share information

In addition, Atlassian's culture has become a significant marketing asset when promoting the company to recruitment candidates. The current generation of technically-savvy workers appreciate an open culture where use of tools such as Twitter and Facebook are an asset, rather than something they need to hide from supervisors.

Lessons

It's the Culture, Stupid!

Changing the way people work requires a change in the work culture itself. The work practices then become automatic. New staff joining the company often have trouble adopting this concept but they soon learn 'correct' behavior from by the pervading culture. Encouraging them to share information on their very first day establishes the culture very strongly.

Instilling the culture early in the compan's history makes this much easier as the company grows. As new staff join the company, they naturally learn the behavior. If a company wants to change the culture, however, then all existing staff need to 're-learn' their behavor.

Lead by example

Choosing to have information 'open' by default requires continual effort by the CEO and management to set the example for all staff. When a staff member submits information to management via email or disk file, they need to encourage the staff member to instead publish it on the wiki so others can obtain access. Of course, there are times when information does need to be kept confidential (eg acquisitions or HR-related issues), so these topics not be published.

Staff, too, become the champions of leading by example. They learn from their peers, so staff need to set the example for their peers, too.

Change underlying systems to match the culture

Moving from Document Management to an Information Management can be difficult with legacy systems and processes, but such a change brings many benefits.

For example, Atlassian hardly uses the traditional Office suite of software. The wiki replaces the need for a Word Processor (at least for internally-targeted information) and spreadsheets are only used by number-focussed staff such as Finance and Marketing. By eliminating the concept of disk files, the wiki becomes the default means of information exchange. As a side benefit, the wiki ensures that people are always looking at the latest version of information, rather than having conflictng versions amongst multiple disk files.

Materials

Want more information? See the video of John Rotenstein's presentation at the Atlassian Summit in June 2011: Living in a Microsoft-Free World: Information Management at Atlassian. (Video, Slides)

Living a Microsoft-free World: Information management at Atlassian

View more presentations from Atlassian Presentations

Images

Videos

Living a Microsoft-free World: Information management at Atlassian

View more presentations from Atlassian Presentations

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November 17, 2011 at 11:38am

VC Arun

John,

An inspiring story and really interesting commentary on Atlassian's motto of "Open Company, No Bullshit"! It certainly seems like the modern trend for companies is to have an open network within the company and a lot more transparency of information that employees at all levels have access to. This brings a couple of potential issues to mind that I think may be worth considering.

First and foremost, how does a company deal with the challenge of having an "open" culture, with transparency of (sensitive) information, and employees who leave the company at various stages? With such an open strategy, could this not pose a liability in terms of people leaving and potentially joining a competitor with full knowledge of how the "open" company's innards really work? Of course, by superficially imposing a non-disclosure would deter most but from a managerial perspective, this kind of situation could indeed be a cause for serious concern.

Secondly, how does this open culture scale with the company? When a company is in its nascent stage, much like my own startup, openness is not really an issue since almost all the people in the company are either founders or at a high level (VP of Engineering for instance). However, as the company grows and starts adding employees at various levels in different departments, how does a manager/executive deal with the culture of openness? Is it directly proportional to the growth of the company or is there some other strategy that you think would work better? My proposition would, in essence, impose a time factor on the employee. A person who joins the company has to stay for a certain period before they are let into the "inner circle" with complete openness; somewhat of a loyalty test. Of course, this is not foolproof but if one is not careful about being open with regards to the company, unforeseen consequences could pose many issues down the road for the organization.

In conclusion, I still think this open culture is the way of the future and is a great management tool that should be adopted across the board. However, companies that do it in a tempered manner and don't rush into in headlong will come out for the better in my humble opinion.

VC Arun

November 17, 2011 at 8:40pm

John Rotenstein

@VC Arun, I hope I can answer some of your questions...

First and foremost, how does a company deal with the challenge of having an "open" culture, with transparency of (sensitive) information, and employees who leave the company at various stages?

The tone of your question suggests you come from a culture where the default is "closed" information. Our preference is to encourage information to be "open" unless there is a specific reason otherwise. Rather than a default of suspicion, we have a default of trust.

Firstly, no company can fully control sensitive information. Even secretive organisations like Apple and the CIA have leaks (and wikileaks). So, no company can control information that employees know when they leave. Also, we don't assume that, just because somebody leaves the company, they immediately become dishonest. Trust doesn't end when a paycheck ends -- they're still the same person. So, companies that suddenly distrust people when they leave probably didn't trust them in the first place!

Secondly, we don't have much "sensitive" information. We give our source code to our customers. We let people download and use our software for a free trial, or even for just $10 for 10 users. Our value-add isn't in our secret information, it's in the service that we provide our customers through support, product improvements and ideas on how to improve their own business. If Atlassian becomes a public company, there will be a point where we have to maintain "sensitive" information due to compliance laws (to avoid potential insider trading opportunities) but it will also give us the opportunity to make even more information public than is currently done. On the whole, information is only sensitive for a period of time (eg until the next product release or earnings announcement), so sensitivity fades relatively quickly.

How does this open culture scale with the company? How does a manager/executive deal with the culture of openness?

The fact that it's part of the culture is what makes it scale! By ingraining openness into our culture, it will pervade to all staff as a standard behaviour. Being 'open' isn't something that a manager has to "deal with" -- it's something that they should encourage!

A person who joins the company has to stay for a certain period before they are let into the "inner circle" with complete openness; somewhat of a loyalty test.

This is the complete opposite of our culture. We start with trust and openness and hope that new staff members adopt it and encourage it. If people aren't willing to share information from Day One, then how could we expect them to do it in future?

Try thinking of it this way... Imagine that you are the coach of a sports team and success is measured in terms of the team's outcome rather than an individual's outcome (that is, the team either wins or losers, there's no rewards for individual players). As the coach, it would be best for every team member to know what's happening so they can work together as a team. If information on strategy or plays was kept secret to new members and only revealed after a period of time, the team would not be operating very effectively. As a team, the goal is to succeed together. That's our goal at Atlassian, too.

I respect your opinion, but I my preference is to work for a company that trusts me from the very beginning, so that we can work together to achieve combined goals, rather than being forced to work without full information until I can somehow 'prove' myself.

August 31, 2011 at 7:06pm

Shubhra Gupta

Brilliant story John! Beautifully presented.
Having joined Atlassian myself - a year ago - the amazing 'Open Information Culture' I experienced was awesome! It was such an inspiring change from the 'closed corporate culture' I had experienced earlier at Investment Banks and large Corporates. Atlassian is the perfect environment that fosters creativity and motivates everyone who works there "to be the change they seek". I could not agree more to all that John has said.

August 14, 2011 at 8:11pm

Bernd Nurnberger

Wish to underscore what John, Jon, and David said above (edit: er, below). Performance may well lurk behind building a culture of care-to-share, leading by example, and using efficient habit-forming tools, that make it ever easier to listen to and serve external and internal customers. Sharing a similar cultural view from Germany: Enterprise 2.0 Knowledge Management – A Revolution of Knowledge in Three Parts.

July 18, 2011 at 2:56am

Jon Ingham

Great case study, though I'd suggest modern businesses run on relationships even more than they do on information - further emphasising the importance of culture of course.

July 15, 2011 at 12:00pm

David Sims

John, I love this story -- very detailed and it shows how something pretty incredible (a very open company) can be facilitated with some relatively simple tools (that are mostly available from third-party cloud vendors now). Point taken that the tools won't do it alone without the commitment from top management and corresponding buy-in by those who join the team. Thanks for taking the time to lay out the details.

- Dave

PS. I also love the fact that you appear to be proudly showing off a PowerBook 145B in your profile pic. You still carrying that around, or is that an old pic?

July 15, 2011 at 3:58pm

John Rotenstein

Ah! Thank you for the appreciation of ancient Macintosh computers! It's actually an original PowerBook 100, which only worked with a specific angle of sunlight due shadows on the LCD screen. Want more reminiscing? Take a look at my video entry for the Salesforce Dreamforce conference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWR82_T42tk

-- John Rotenstein