I remember having the “a-ha moment” when my perspective of Glider/Superbly went from “three guys making a thing” to “a company that will continue on, with or without me”. It’s a simple idea, but it had a profound impact on my perspective.
It suddenly became high-priority to document our company knowledge, processes, understanding, culture, and history.
The goal was twofold:
- To create a way for new hires to quickly get up to speed
- More importantly, to create a persistent system that no longer relies upon a single person’s memory/knowledge.
Here’s how we’ve set it up:
- All long-term knowledge is now recorded in our internal Wiki. Things like: a checklist for onboarding new hires, high level vision, marketing strategies, competitive information, etc. There’s currently about 50 pages.
- Notes from meetings and customer development are recorded on an internal Etherpad and then linked from the Wiki. There’s about 120 Etherpad pages.
- TODO’s should never be managed in anybody’s head. They live in Teambox and/or Sprintly (for the technical team) and/or Pipedrive (for sales and bizdev).
The hardest part is getting everybody in the company to be diligent about using/updating the tools. It’s a good idea to have one person be accountable for making sure they stay relevant and get used. It needs to be pervasive in your culture.
How are you solving this in your company?