We mean this in the nicest way, but you don’t scale.
You’ve put yourself in that process step with the best of intentions.
- You’re going to write the Content Standard by yourself because everyone else is so busy, and it really has to get done quickly.
- You’re going to review knowledge before publication because you want to make sure customers have a really good experience.
- You’re going to encourage people to flag content so you can improve it when you get a chance.
Fortunately, but inconveniently, this knowledge management initiative is about to be come bigger and more powerful than you planned. Trickles of customer-facing knowledge will become torrents. Occasional suggestions will morph into a buzzsaw of continuous improvement. A small core team will turn into everybody.
At that point, you won’t be helping. You’ll just be in the way.
The only way to scale is to engage everybody. Everyone should define processes and measures; everybody should review content with every use; everybody should update and improve content.
It’s tempting to do it all yourself, because aligning the entire organization with your mission is much harder. That is, engaging others is harder until doing it all yourself becomes impossible, at which point the train wreck has happened and it’s too late to engage everyone.
Communicate unreasonably, create the community, and erase your name from every individual step of the process.
ps – as readers of this blog, you’re already in the Inside Crew. So if you’re going to be at Technology Services World (TSW) next week in Santa Clara, or if you’re in the area and just want to stop by, here’s an invitation to join us with our partners Stone Cobra, The Vergis Group, and Kepner-Tregoe at an Inside Crew event near the convention center. Please join us! dbk
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