Jimmy Wales’ big idea must have sounded crazy in 2001. He described it this way, “Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we are doing”.  If that wasn’t bold enough, he decided it would be an open-source encyclopedia that any user could edit. There would be no one person or group with the ultimate authority.

For Jimmy Wales to achieve his big idea, he knew he would need many supporters. His first try at the online encyclopedia concept was with Nupedia. The articles were written by experts and peer-reviewed much like Encyclopedia Britannica. The peer review process was slow and at times so brutal that even Jimmy Wales stopped writing articles. For Wikipedia to work, he would need to attract volunteers like Justin Knapp.

Justin Knapp is a 30 year old pizza delivery man that lives in Indianapolis, Indiana. Justin earned degrees in philosophy and political science.  Justin has made over 1.1M edits on Wikipedia. He is a volunteer so he has never received compensation for his effort. Justin has said that he does it for two reasons, “Aesthetically, it just pleases me. This is how I relax: I read and write. Finding things to do in this project is a way of passing time that is constructive and fun for me. On the other hand, editing is also a way of actualizing some of my values. I believe strongly in sharing and collaboration so if I can be part of a worldwide, multi-lingual community all dedicated toward giving away the world’s knowledge freely, that gives me a sense that I’m doing a good thing.”

The other contributors to Wikipedia are Osmar Valdebenito, a 24 year old engineer from Chile with 37,000 edits. Richard Farmbrough is 50 year old project management from England has made 985K edits. James Heilman is a 32 year old Emergency Room doctor from Canada has made 65K edits. (Hyperlink here) Wikipedia has over 90,000 volunteers authoring, editing and monitoring the content that is important to them. They have a small number of volunteer system administrators, a mediation committee and a few members on the arbitration committee. They are all volunteers and control all of the content on the site.

To successfully achieve a dream or big idea, you likely need a lot of help from people you can’t afford to pay. You will need to develop a tailored approach to inspire each of these types of supporters:

Co-Aspirers – People that share your dream or big idea and maybe willing adopt it as their own.

Advocates – People that believe in the aspirer and/or the dream or big idea. The Advocate is willing to help as a mentor, coach, advisor, open doors and say good things on behalf of the aspirer.

Moral Supporters – You don’t really know how important these supporters are until you experience the expected setbacks along the way.

Volunteers – These are people that perform tasks on behalf of the aspirer person or are just interested in making the dream or big idea happen.

We humans are always looking for ways to improve our prosperity. Since we may not be able to offer supporters money or gifts, we need to offer them intrinsic value that could be even more important to them. It is much easier to offer money, favors or an iPad then it is to try to figure out what people value intrinsically. While we want most of the same intrinsic things, we each have a different way of defining them:

Purpose – The feeling of having a sense of purpose

Connected and Loved – Having quality interpersonal relationships, feelings of belonging and love.

Control – The feeling and ability to have control over aspects of life.

Opportunity – The opportunity to pursue and fulfill dreams, desires and/or improve life.

Competence/Competitive Success – Competitive success and winning as well as feeling competent in abilities.

Accomplishment/Pride – Feeling good about where you are in life and proud of what you have around you.

Confidence – Confident that you belong, are worthy and you can make desired changes or achieve goals.

When you need supporters to achieve a dream or big idea, ask yourself, “what would Justin Knapp want?”  Justin cited “it pleases me …doing something constructive …actualizing some of my values…be part of a worldwide, multi-lingual community…gives me a sense that I’m doing a good thing.”

Jimmy Wales had to figure out what his volunteers wanted before he could make his big idea happen. Rather than asking for supporters to help, maybe you can help them get what they want (like Justin Knapp). The result may be supporters helping you make almost anything happen.

 

Posted: Thursday, October 10th, 2013 @ 5:36 pm
Categories: Enablement.
Tags: Aspirer, Big Ideas, Dreams, prosperity, supporters.