Knowledge Management Policies

At a previous employer, we had a tools overload problem. Three different tools for knowledge management, multiple cloud drives, and multiple project management tools. A wealth of knowledge not at your fingertips. After tracking the information down, you could not trust if it was current or even relevant. This had to change. After choosing ONE tool, we started the massive migration while putting new standards in place. These were those standards.

Overview

How do we elevate the game of everyone in our sphere of influence, hold onto precious knowledge, align our visions and processes, and empower others to solve their own problems? Knowledge management! Our tool of choice to manage our knowledge is Notion and how we stay organized is paramount. This document provides some guidance, standards, and expectations of how we do just that.

Knowledge Management Definition

Knowledge management is the process that helps us identify, select, organize, disseminate and transfer important information and expertise that are part of collective memory. It is contextual, relevant, and actionable:

• The main purpose of Knowledge Management is to ensure the right information is available to the right people at the right time
• Knowledge Management enables support to be more efficient and improves the quality of service, increases customer satisfaction, and reduces the cost of service support and delivery over time.
• Knowledge Management empowers company-wide awareness, and knowledge sharing helps employees learn without requiring a large amount of time from others.
• Knowledge Management helps build alignment and ensures we are on the same page.

Challenges of Knowledge Management:

• Finding methods to efficiently capture and record business knowledge
• Making information and resources easy to find
• Motivating others to support knowledge management initiatives by sharing applicable knowledge
• Integrating knowledge management into existing processes and information systems
• Knowledge must be curated and current - old or stale information misinforms and confuses.
• It requires time and effort. Pays dividends in the future that aren’t always felt in the current moment.

Why is Knowledge Management Important?

Knowledge Management sometimes feels intangible and difficult to quantify, but is critical for improvements in productivity, shared awareness and alignment, and a lift in staff confidence. Some reasons why KM is so important:

• Improve the quality and speed of decision-making by ensuring that reliable information and data are available throughout the service lifecycle.
• More efficient usage of resources. Provides relevant information to aid in complex and specific scenarios where knowledge may not be learned yet. Examples: How-Tos, SOPs, documented process, simplified visuals for reference, and ability to easily compute new insights from the raw data provided.
• Improved service and faster support delivery by using a consistent process and historical documentation. Executed the same way everytime, collecting the same predefined criteria.
  • By-product of improved service: Increased end-user satisfaction and perception by responding timely, solving quickly, and having answers primed and ready because we’ve dealt with the scenario before. Happy customers means more sales and better Net Promoter Score (NPS).
• Improved Speed to Competency (STC) for new hires being onboarded. Less hand-holding and time are required when we can refer to answers already prepared.
• Sales and service processes will be more effective and with fewer mistakes.
• Staff will have access to the ‘best process’ to get things done quickly.
• We leverage subject-matter experts (SMEs) for the benefit of all.
• Access to historical context and reasons regarding the ‘why’ and ‘how’ something was done.

Policies

The policies are:

1. Knowledge will be reviewed monthly by a ‘knowledge manager’ to verify knowledge usefulness.
2. All knowledge articles will be reviewed for accuracy once a year.
3. A process isn’t a process until it is documented.
4. A work in progress (draft) should be noted as such, and ideally be stored in a private space until ready for global viewing.
5. Be quick to remove knowledge that is no longer relevant. Information should be applicable today.
6. Group records when a pattern is recognized. Always create higher levels of structure.
7. Use prefixes for improved discovery when searching.
8. Ask the right questions.

Knowledge Manager is assigned per space. This can be a rotating role or done by the manager/lead of the area.

Knowledge Manager can:

• Request content be moved to a different location or within a smaller audience. Ex) Team Workspace or Private Space
• Review and tag pages as:
  • Needing Update
  • Marked for Removal (can be moved to private space)
  • Needs Review (check if content is still relevant and accurate)
  • Move to Team or Private Space

This will be a proactive effort and done collectively twice a year (Documentation Days), but we will regularly review, update and prune information when we see the need.

Is a process really a process if it isn’t documented? We build team alignment on how we work, we minimize ‘remembering’ by having references quickly available, and we organize and tag for easy discovery within a database. Organizational processes will be located in a high-level area (SOPs database), and purposeful databases will be created for specific organizational areas (within team workspace, department space, etc).

Often times we see knowledge added that is incomplete and never worked on again. This is unnecessary bloat that only serves to confuse, confound, and frustrate.

Rules for work in progress:

1. WIPs should be started in a private space with a smaller audience until reviewed and approved for global audience.
2. WIPs should include (WIP) in the title and/or first line of the document.
3. A Knowledge Manager can request a WIP document be moved to a private or team space.

Be quick to flag pages that need update, relevance, or possible removal. If information is only pertinent to the individual who wrote it, it should be moved to their private space.

If knowledge has an expiration, indicate this at the top of the document and mark for removal on a specific date or when certain criteria is met.

Some guidelines for organizing records:

• Create structure and logical groupings. Everything in one bucket quickly becomes chaotic and untenable.
• When you see greater than 2 records that have a common theme, create a parent page for them.
• When creating a document that will have a repeating theme or require similar properties, create a Database. Check first if a similar database exists. Examples could include: meeting minutes, retrospectives, weekly updates, demos, interviews etc)
• Each team will have their own Team Workspace that is decoupled from Company Areas
• For projects, backlogs, meeting minutes and more, we only need ONE database for everyone that share the same process. Use properties for improved filtering and create ‘Views’ for returning only those records that are relevant to you.

Often we find ourselves in a situation where our record titles are the same as other records but related to different areas. This makes doing a basic search a multi-click affair until you find the right record. This can be easily negated by adding a prefix that makes it bespoke to the purpose. An example of this is searching for ‘Meeting Minutes’ or ‘Projects’ etc and improving discovery can be a simple matter of adding a prefix: ‘S&M: Meeting Minutes’, ‘PF: Projects’.

In all efforts, ask:

• Will a coworker or myself be doing this again and again? Is it a complex or multi-step process? Document it.
• Is my solution to a problem non-intuitive or non-standard? Document why.
• Do others need to or want to know what I know? Show some love, document it.
• Is my team on the same page

When reviewing, ask:

• Is this information timely or outdated? Remove it.
• Did this make sense to me on the first or second read? Clarify.
• Does this record have the right audience? Minimize the audience to those needing it.
• Does this record need metadata for easy discovery and building of insights using filters and rollups? Add it.

Measuring Knowledge Management Success

Metrics to measuring success could be:

• Related Knowledge Records - Measures how often each record/page/process is being associated/referenced to other records (e.g. Incident, Change, Process etc.).
• Knowledge Use - The number of times a record is flagged as +1 or “helpful".
• Knowledge Searches - Frequency of search terms
• Knowledge Records created - Volume of records created
• Knowledge Records updated - Volume of records updated
• Stale knowledge records - Volume of records beyond their valid date defined by record-specific criteria.
• Recency - How often and date last referenced.