Firstly, I work at Slab.com — a knowledge hub for teams. So, obviously I'm slanted in my perspective. But I'm not going to pitch the specifics of Slab here for you. Rather, I'm going to share a post we recently published designed to help teams document/write overcome knowledge hoarding (regardless of what tool/system they use):
It's not a direct pitch to use Slab. In it we talk about the three reasons we discovered most folks hoard knowledge:
1. Leverage: If an employee hoards their knowledge, they may feel like they are irreplaceable.
2. Fear: Putting yourself out there can be intimidating. What if colleagues or supervisors respond with negative feedback?
3. Competition: If your workplace rewards personal triumphs over shared victories, employees are less likely to want to share their "secrets."
Many teams initially gravitate toward more generic document editors (Google Docs) as their first team wiki, for logical reasons:
- These editors are familiar to most people, meaning they can be easier to adopt across an organization
- Most companies already use (and pay for) at least one of these tools
- Teams realize the need for documentation, but aren't thinking of how their documentation tool will scale alongside their business
But there are some issues with these document editors that teams discover as they grow. This article dives deep into those shortcomings. Here are both article links again, and good luck!
https://slab.com/blog/knowledge-hoarding/
It's not a direct pitch to use Slab. In it we talk about the three reasons we discovered most folks hoard knowledge:
1. Leverage: If an employee hoards their knowledge, they may feel like they are irreplaceable. 2. Fear: Putting yourself out there can be intimidating. What if colleagues or supervisors respond with negative feedback? 3. Competition: If your workplace rewards personal triumphs over shared victories, employees are less likely to want to share their "secrets."
Also, no matter what documentation tool you use, it's worth reading this first: https://slab.com/blog/documentation-tools/
Many teams initially gravitate toward more generic document editors (Google Docs) as their first team wiki, for logical reasons:
- These editors are familiar to most people, meaning they can be easier to adopt across an organization - Most companies already use (and pay for) at least one of these tools - Teams realize the need for documentation, but aren't thinking of how their documentation tool will scale alongside their business
But there are some issues with these document editors that teams discover as they grow. This article dives deep into those shortcomings. Here are both article links again, and good luck!
1. https://slab.com/blog/knowledge-hoarding/ 2. https://slab.com/blog/documentation-tools/