Extracting legacy information without creating job insecurity
Extracting legacy information without creating job insecurity
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When a company finally realizes that a select few members of the team hold the keys to the success of the company, the owner and managers, and everyone around them can start to feel the energy of stress around the inability to replicate what that person does. Also, this can especially be felt as the company continues to grow.
Saying things such as “without him, this department would fall apart” “without her we know nothing about this process” “he does it best so we have to wait until he gets to it”.
That’s just a few of the things that you will hear in a company that is in desperate need of a proper information retention system. We all know companies are entities of their own, even though they are created and run by people. And in my opinion, because of this, it has the right to be able to retain information that is necessary for it to run as smoothly as possible and to its highest ability.
In no way, shape, or form does this mean you want to replace your best team members. It is NOT some grand scheme to get rid of them. However, many team members experience feelings of job insecurity when they are asked to teach other people how they do the best of what they do.
Steps on how to launch a knowledge base
In this article, I’m going to give you a few steps and pieces that you can use to help you launch a knowledge base for your company without creating feelings of job insecurity.
1. It’s important that you have a strategic plan before announcing anything.
You must either bring in a consultant or pull a few of your team members together who are generally looked up to by their fellow team members. For example, you don’t wanna pull in John from the office, who everyone dislikes and who think he has no clue what goes on in “their world”.
Of course, liking and disliking someone doesn’t matter so much in business but it does with this. Also, the issue is that when you’re trying to get someone to share how they do the best of the best processes, it’s nice to have someone who they feel is on their side leading the program and who values them.
2. Make sure you have all your ducks in a row.
By this I mean software, tools, how are you going to make the SOP’s. What systems are you going to need? What process do they follow to create processes? The lead people who are overseeing this program should be the FIRST to start the process. By documenting their own tasks in an SOP form. THATS RIGHT! This will not only showcase that this is for everyone, but also show examples of what the end documentation should look like.
The way that you announce this company-wide is extremely important.
You need to do this in a company gathering. You need to have food, you need to make this a happy moment. Buy the company lunch, plan a presentation, and showcase what the leaders of this program have been working on by showing their own SOPs in the system. YES, this means the leads for the launch have made their SOPs for their jobs and loaded them into the system. You need to get the team on board with the WHY.
It’s important you say the words out loud and with power behind your words, “This is NOT to replace anyone; this is to empower you all to grow as the company does. This is to ensure all the amazing work you do can be done the same way you do it as we increase in numbers. Everyone in every position will be documenting their systems and processes in his new knowledge base platform.”
Conclusion
They need to know the plans for the future of the company, and that there will be opportunities for everyone to shine and use this new platform to empower themselves.
There is a lot to launching a knowledge base system and actually extracting valuable information. It is not just having a superficial bullet point list of HOW TO’s for mundane tasks.
I hope these three tips have helped you. If you want to talk more feel free to reach out to me in my LinkedIn messages or book a call here! https://calendly.com/ceo-nicole-russell/30minutelmscall
Thank you for reading my blog,
Nicole Russell
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