If you are tapping into a crowd to find answers to a specific problem, i.e., crowdsourcing, here’s five key success factors that you need to be mindful of.

5 Key Success Factors

  1. Focus on a clear outcome – start with the end in mind, know what are you trying to achieve.
  2. Collaboration as a core competency – you are not looking for loners, but those who can build upon other people’s content to create better.
  3. Engagement with the enterprise – understand the way the organisation works and build across groups and silos. At the edges of those groups is where you will find the most treasure.
  4. Transparency in the process – you need to build trust and so be very open about the “rules”. When you introduce secrecy, you introduce conspiracy theories, which breeds distrust.
  5. Communications are key – If nobody knows what you are doing, they won’t get involved. Plan carefully and across multiple channels. If it is important, I don’t think it is possible to over-communicate.  (For more on this, read my blog on “The Kotter Model: 8-step process to ensure successful change”).
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