Wikipedia Employee Traits

Fortune magazine (September 17, 2007) has a short interview with Wikipedia founder Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales, "The Knowledge Maestro" (which is not online). He makes some good leadership points about the sort of employees Wikipedia looks for and how to treat them. Here are the relevant quotes from the article:

Know who you're hiring. If you're going to run a company like ours, with people everywhere, you have to be careful about who you're hiring, because you have no idea what they're doing all day. The people we hire come to us from the Wikipedia site. We know and trust them, so they don't need a lot of supervision. ...

and

Treat employees as if they're volunteers. I've gotten good management experience working with volunteers [who edit Wikipedia entries]. You can't just tell them what to do. A good manager knows the same is true with employees. If you have the right people, and you're organizing things sensibly, there shouldn't be a lot of telling people what to do.

What this means to you

So what does this mean to you? Well, if you're a manager who's going to run a company, or even a department or small team in a bigger company, Wales describes the sort of employees you should look for and how to treat them. You'll find and attract motivated employees who will be productive with minimal management. Rather than wasting time having to micromanage them, you can focus your energies on leading them towards big, hairy, audacious goals that will enable your organization to not just survive but excel.

If you're a working slob like me, you don't have anyone to manage but yourself, but these guidelines still apply.

First, you should strive to be this kind of employee, so that your managers can treat you this way. Make sure you're getting work done when they're not checking up on you (and perhaps point this out to them if need be), and after a while they won't check up on you so much because they're confident that you're getting your work done anyway. Keep them informed of your status so that they don't have to check up on you, and again they'll trust that you're getting things done or you'll tell them otherwise. Don't just wait to be told what to work on; when you see stuff that needs to be taken care of, depending on the task and your management's disposition, either suggest to your manager that it'd be a good thing to take care of or just go ahead and do it. Ideally, your managers should be settings goals so that you can be identifying tasks you can perform that will help meet those goals.

Second, you should strive to attract employees like this to your team so that you can work with them. In my jobs, we workers often helped interview new workers we were considering hiring for our team. You should request this opportunity as well, and use it to look for self-motivated employees like Wales describes. Tell others about what you're doing on your team to attract them to want to join you. This way, you won't be the only person on your team following these practices.