Working Out Loud Week is from 5-11 June 2017.  Working Out Loud Week is a chance for a global community of practitioners to find new freedom to work together to practice sharing work in progress with relevant communities for learning and collaboration. The theme of this WOLWeek is ‘Contribute and Create Value’

Day 4: Share

In a digital workplace, much of the value that an employee can contribute and will receive depends on sharing: openness, transparency, better use of data, better use of knowledge, learning from peers, effective collaboration, greater autonomy, agile work practices and much more.  Working out loud is a key practice to get the work in process that we all have and make it visible and accessible for the rest of the organization.  That means you need to share your work.

You have a lot to share. Take your current email and make it available. Open up the contents of your C: drive. Share your calendar so that others can see what you have going on. Share your contact lists. Share your lesson from the day. Share your challenges, opportunities, and ideas.

Sharing doesn’t have to be big. You don’t have to share with the world. You don’t have to push the message to make sure other people notice. Find a place that has one or a few relevant people and lift your work and your challenges up where people can find them.

Your contributions will begin to create value for others immediately. Improving clarity and alignment, reducing rework, and helping people better understand what you have underway. You will find that the oppenness and generosity of sharing your work will draw others in to help and to learn from your work.

There is a vulnerability of sharing work that is not perfect or that is not finished. That vulnerability can feel threatening but it is also what makes your work more engaging to others. They can see your process of work and will respect your decisions to share, provided you are clear on your process of working out loud and respect them in your sharing.

Resources to assist you and your organisation with WOLWeek are available on WOLWeek.com.