Kiva and its implications for UW management practices

On the UW-MANIAC Google Group last week, I posted information about Kiva.org, an innovative micro-lending group: http://groups.google.com/group/uwManiac/browse_thread/thread/b91026f1aa55cadc

This got me thinking: What are the implications of this approach for managing in leaner fiscal times at UW-Madison? elsewhere? One thing that jumps out is the attitude that we need to partner with one another to make the whole greater than the sum of our independent parts. Synergies must be sought, opportunities to share resources extended from a place of generosity.

That's easy to say, but what does it mean in practice? It isn't as if we are going to share our budgets with one another, reassign staff, turn back unspent funds, etc. But what it can mean is that we should pursue ways to facilitate genuine collaboration on issues that we share, such as improved efficiencies in administrative processes, teaching one another new technologies that can advance student learning and research, and being open to approaching issues by bringing together people who often don't usually work together (across depts, work classifications, etc)
In this way, we can 'loan expertise' to one another and stretch our human and fiscal investments.

One other thing we can do that facilitates such partnering is a better job of documenting and sharing 'good practices' with one another ('best practices' may be fine in static environments, but in dynamic ones, I wouldn't be so presumptuous). If we document our accomplishments and lessons learned in a way that facilitates a broader understanding of what they mean, others can grab them, adapt them, use them for their own purposes and, as appropriate, feel genuinely invited to contact the creators for advice about how to apply them in new contexts.

These are small steps... but they can be important. What do you think? How else muight we take the 'micro-lending' model and apply it within large, complex organizations?

-Harry