Digital Opsessions

Let’s be real. Everyone wants healthier, more efficient, and more profitable teams. Duh. That’s obvious. The question isn’t why; the question is how.

The #1 thing people tell me is that they want to get everyone on their team on the same page. They want to do that by making sure that all their knowledge and information is stored in one centralized place that’s easily accessible to everyone in their org. Sounds easy enough, so what makes it so hard?

Originally, I planned to come here and write about how Notion solves all these problems, but I don’t think this is a Notion problem. It’s a culture problem. You can get all your shared knowledge in the same place using any tool you want when you really think about it. Google Drive? Sure. Microsoft teams? If you really want. Heck, you could even do it with an in-person filing cabinet system.

But wait, what’s the culture problem? The reason you don’t have everyone on the same page is that you have a culture of documentation problem. This comes in all shapes and sizes. What you need to establish is a culture of documentation.

Everyone on your team needs to clearly understand:

• How to document knowledge

• How to document SOPs

• How to communicate internally

• Where to store things

Let’s do a fun little exercise. Take a second to think about your own organization.

Pick 5 teams in your company (HR, sales, customer success, operations, etc).

Now, pick one thing from each department that you need to find. Here are a few examples: your company’s security policy, OOO checklist, sales process workflows, etc; you get the point. Can you find the doc you’re looking for within a few minutes?

Can you find it without asking someone for help? My guess is probably not.

Step one is solving this problem.

You have to establish a culture of documentation. Clearly established, easy to understand, and follow ways to communicate, store, and create documentation for shared knowledge in your company. Then, and only then, once you’ve established that, does the tool matter.

Okay, okay, I get it, Skyler, we’ve established a culture of documentation. Now can you show me cool Notion stuff now? (At least that’s what I imagine you saying right now 😉), and the answer is heck yeah, I can!

Here’s my favorite workspace we’ve built to show off. This workspace was built for a series A startup that was looking to hyper-scale from 9→145 employees within a 10-month.

It’s not just the aesthetics (although they’re pretty sweet); what I love about this workspace is that its easy use. Everything in this workspace just makes sense. You know where to go and where to find things, and oh, remember that exercise I had you do earlier? I’m guessing you can figure out where it came from. Everything in this workspace is organized by function so that it can be clearly found, documented, and communicated within a few minutes.

Want to learn how to establish a culture of documentation similar to this? Need help getting everyone and everything on the same page? Or do you want to spruce up your workspace with some really cool aesthetics? We should probably talk more 😉

Until next time,