Q1: What is Working Out Loud?

[Lana O'Brien]

Q1: To start, what does Working out Loud mean to you?

Question Two is live here. 

[#2]

Sharing knowledge ..openly and securely

[#3]

Narrating your work in a way that others can see and therefore contribute. More concretely, it means being uncomfortable for a while, then having a "wow" moment when someone you've never met saves you hours of work, and finally getting addicted to sharing to the point that your boss complains about over-sharing.

[#4]

To me Working Out Loud is a means of letting others know what you're working in order to build connections and having the ability to learn and iterate quickly based on feedback.

[#5]

Being able to collaborate openly - the benefit of which you can get to answers and problem-solving more quickly! 

[#6]

Purposefully sharing work in progress with a relevant community so that you and they can learn and benefit. Bryce Williams coined it originally as Observable Work + Narrating Your Work. John Stepper has developed the concept a great deal and written a book on it. See http://workingoutloud.com

[#7]

Working out loud has both individual and team implications. It can take the form of a personal commitment to share your tasks, questions, workflow progress, milestones. And/or, you might help to create or transform the workflow of a team, which may have knock-on effects such as eliminating status meetings.

I've seen a wide variety of working out loud posts, from those that have formal syntax so that they're quickly scanned, to free-form and irregular contributions, to a group that was purely pictures of a site build in progress over months.

[#8]

I love @Chris Slemp's answer. The 'wow' moment is amazing when you see it all come together. 

[#9]

Being ok to share the sh*&$y first draft. Or second draft.

To be honest and vulerable with where you are headed with a project or program. And be open to feedback along the way.

[#10]

For me, it's about having and sharing transparency in your thinking and perspectives. It's the ability and courage to share your thinking for early feedback with people, and have new opinions influence your work and 'established' truths or even skew your personal bias.

[#11]

Working Out Loud to me is the passion of technologies and engage people to adopt in a best way and to give more time to do a Productivity Life !

[#12]

While we are here on the Tech Community, working out loud doesn't require social technologies. You can work out loud on posters or in a conversation. However there is no doubt it is accelerated and given greater reach by the power of collaboration in Office365 and Yammer

[#13]

To me, working out loud means sharing content, projects, ideas throughout the creative process and asking for feedback.

[#14]

---

@Naomi Moneypenny wrote:

For me, it's about having and sharing transparency in your thinking and perspectives. It's the ability and courage to share your thinking for early feedback with people, and have new opinions influence your work and 'established' truths or even skew your personal bias.

---

Definitely agree with you Naomi!  People challenging your perspectives is a key benefit of working out loud.

[#15]

Breaking down the walls that we create around ourselves, obscuring our work from each other and preventing us from being able to assist each other.  It's scary at first but it allows you to find yourself surrounded by colleagues willing and able to help us be more effective in our work efforts.

[#16]

YES. all the YES.

Being brave is a mantra I've had this year. Personal and professional reasons.

[#17]

Others have touched on this already, but built into the value proposition of working out loud is the value of unknown connections, either within your defined team, or in an open group, from the greater network. As I say far too often, you never know everyone who KNOWS what you need, or NEEDS what you know. And you never will... if you don't work out loud.

[#18]

Great answer @Chris Slemp. I'm going to have to borrow this one.

[#19]

Question two is now live! Here's the thread. 

[#20]

Helps to nurture an organizations cultural DNA by allowing an authentic genuine employee/team voice, hopefully demonstrating the right behaviors and values and at the same time aligning to strategy, goals and vision. This can be aided by using #hashtags to filter the conversations. These #hashtags can be shared with a purpose to network with others on similar subjects that you might be working on.

[#21]

To me, Working Out Loud is about teamwork. It brings your teammates into your world and shares not only context, but responsibility for the bigger picture and how your work contributes to that goal. It can involve a lot of effort (and anxiety) to make the leap, but it will definitely change your perspective on work, collaboration, inboxes and information sharing.

[#22]

For me, working out loud is giving others on your immediate team, and even others on other teams across your org, the chance to positively impact your work--before the first or final draft/iteration/process is decided or finished! Many times your coworkers have valuable, undiscovered, information related to your work that could prevent you from starting from scratch or executing alone.

[#23]

Being unafraid to put your idea out there even when it's in its infancy--because as Mel says, you never know who knows something, and to expand on that, you never know who can help make it shine and succeed beyond your initial scope.

[#24]

Important to capture that business value! That's what will convince other teams to join you.

[#25]

John Stepper describes five elements of working out loud: Visible Work, Generosity, Relationships, Purposeful Discovery and a Growth Mindset. See http://workingoutloud.com/blog/the-5-elements-of-working-out-loud-revisited

[#26]

This is working out loud! This is us! @Lana O'Brien @Anna Chu, @Angus Florance, @Michael Holste, @Deleted, @Steve Nguyen, @Maddie Egan

Yammer AMA in Redmond 8 November 2016