Effective long-term strategies require effective knowledge management—organizing documentation of procedures, best practices, and successful strategies to decouple organizational knowledge from organization members.
I am no stranger to wearing many hats in any organization. As a teacher, this was a result of leading several university committees and teaching 12-15 sections of half a dozen different classes every year. As a copywriter and campaign manager, I have always taken charge of specific product areas or content production processes.
I rely on my background in technical writing and information design to create effective knowledge management systems to document the knowledge required in these roles without superfluous content. I rely on my background in multimedia content creation and web design to ensure that these materials are more than simple text documents or haphazard screen recordings.
In my experience, a good knowledge management strategy produces material that is accessible, transparent, and accurate. The best strategy includes processes for regular maintenance and updates.
Accessibility: Keep it where people find it; make it so they’ll read it
Anyone who has ever worked, volunteered, or been to school in an organization with documented procedures or codes of conduct has experienced absolutely critical document that were also completely inaccessible. Whether it stems from a lack of communication expertise or a lack of maintenance as media creation options have expanded, inaccessible documents seem like the norm.
Accessibility includes three core traits:
- There must be no barriers to the material holding the information (whether that material be a paper manual, a YouTube playlist, or a complex intranet)
- The medium of publication must not create a barrier for the target audience (whether that barrier is language, the mode of access, or the structure of information)
- The presentation of information must encourage the target audience to continue reading or viewing the material
Now, that third trait doesn’t mean that your organization’s standard procedures should be the next Best Seller or even summer beach reading for new hires. It does mean, however, that the material shouldn’t feel like something people need to slog through, as though it were a punishment for the crime of needing information.
To really accomplish that third trait, the first two need to be fully addressed. I have spent many hours creating sites in Sharepoint, Canvas, WordPress and other platforms, ensuring a simple information architecture to drive users to the information they need (even if they don’t know the name for it) in as few clicks as possible, while taking advantage of multimedia design options to include clear, concise graphic explanations to support textual descriptions.
While I have made many explainer-style videos for product use, internal procedures, and key organizational information, I do not allow them to stand in for text content. To paraphrase a student comment from the COVID days, sometimes we just need to CTRL + F (CMD + F for the Mac users) for a specific word or phrase, and no one likes to watch through a video of any length just for those short bits of information.
Of course, the best examples are those professional Sharepoint sites, but I can’t really share them. I can share an example page here, though.
Transparency: The information is on the page
This trait seems like a no-brainer, but many of us have encountered training materials or other organizational documents that tell us to “see Report X, chapter Y” or “consult the manual on Z” when we encounter something complex.
In the days of printed binders and booklets, this made sense. Don’t reprint Report X in other documents if you don’t need to. In the days of electronic media and near-unlimited storage, no. Reprint it. Link it. Turn the important parts into snippets, patterns, or other reusable component offered by your platform.
In short, make it as easy as possible for the information your audience needs to be on the page or screen when they need it. Every new search action a reader has to take to find information (even if it’s simply flipping to the index) is an opportunity to fail to find that information or to simply give up.
What does this look like in practice? See this email template and this approach to creating content manuals for examples that use graphic-heavy documentation to provide information without overwhelming a reader with text.
Accuracy: If it’s true, it’s here; if it’s speculation, it’s somewhere else
I typically take on the task of creating knowledge management resources to combat specific problems in an organization’s content or communication strategies. Over-reliance on old data and experiences can cause a strategy to lose sync with its target audience, and failing to document new experiences or processes causes organizations to stick to “how it’s always been done” out of a lack of other options.
Knowledge management is ultimately about ensuring everyone has access to the most current, most accurate information they need to complete a task. See how I approach content design and testing to ensure I always have current knowledge of how processes are performing.
Empower People by Distributing Knowledge
Constraining knowledge or authority to an individual rather than a position or process can cause major disruptions if that individual leaves an organization, and it almost guarantees they will never be allowed to leave the role they are in. Binding knowledge to an individual expert or authority also adds friction to any processes that involve that knowledge; for instance, if only a small group of people know how to create or edit webpages within a complex content management system, then any task including a webpage must be worked into their schedule.
Bonus Round: Maintenance and Updates
A good knowledge management strategy produces materials that are modular, so individual components can be reviewed and updated regularly without overhauling the entire enterprise.
What does that look like? A well-organized website full of granular pages, with no more than three levels of depth from starting point to any information page. Take advantage of tables of contents, graphical organizers, and succinct titles to let readers CTRL + F their way to what they need.
See this Sharepoint site’s home page for an example of a knowledge management system designed for easy maintenance.
