Key takeaways
- If knowledge is mainly in heads, quality becomes unpredictable and lead time grows.
- One page per critical task is often enough to secure knowledge.
- Publish where the work happens, not in a stand-alone knowledge cave.
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Measure transfer and turnaround time, not the number of documents.
The real problem
Teams today solve a lot with experience and good will. That works, until something changes: spike in work volume, a colleague drops out, a new customer expects a different way of working. Then it becomes clear how much is implicit. Onboarding takes longer, decisions shift, mistakes recur. Not because people are weak, but because the system is invisible. So that is why it is important to secure knowledge.
Universally recognisable
Whether you run projects in construction, service, healthcare or software: there are always 10 to 20 moments that make the difference. Think intake, pricing, go/no-go, work preparation, delivery check, post-calculation. If those steps are not explicit, variation arises without control. Quality then unnecessarily depends on a few key people, with stress and delay as the price.
Securing knowledge is how you do it
1) Work with one-pagers, not manuals
For each critical task, create one page with four fixed blocks:
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Purpose: when do you use this and what result do you expect.
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Steps: 5 to 9 actions with clear exit criteria.
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Example: a screenshot, mail template or completed form.
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Owner and date: who maintains this page and when revised.
Write in verbs and link directly to the form or tool people are already using.
2) Publish where the work lives
Place links in Teams or Slack, pin in your ticketing, link in CRM, put an SOP button in your internal home page. Findability comes before completeness. An okay document that everyone finds beats the perfect document that no one sees.
3) Make improvement routine and small
Each time a step deviates or stalls, note what was missing or unclear. Add one sentence or one example. Knowledge management is never a project, it is maintenance.
Speed comes from practices that everyone can repeat.
What you do measure
Forget the document counter feeling. Look monthly at three figures that show behaviour:
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Percentage of new colleagues completing a task independently within the first few weeks.
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Turnaround time on two or three critical flows, e.g. from intake to quotation.
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Number of times colleagues share the link to a working method instead of typing separate explanations.
If these three improve, your organisational capacity grows without additional FTE.
Common mistakes and how to avoid them
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Too much detail. Capture what should always be, leave room for craftsmanship.
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Islets. A separate wiki without linking to tools is dusty. Link to the places where people are already clicking.
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No owner. Each piece needs a name and a revision date, otherwise it wears out.
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One-off sprint. Knowledge management is not a clean-up day, it is a way of working.
First ten days, concretely
Day 1-2: Identify with the team the 10 most risky moments in your process.
Day 3-5: Write five one-pagers, not perfect, but usable.
Day 6: Link them to your tools and pin where necessary.
Day 7-10: Have two colleagues perform a task purely with the one-pager, collect bottlenecks and improve each page with one example or sentence.
Universally applicable
Replace intake with triage, work preparation with sprint planning or post-calculation with file closure. The principle remains identical. You don't build bureaucracy, you build repeatability. As a result, speed becomes normal rather than an exception.
Book a meeting with Tarquin, founder of MediaGuru, to solve your challenges.
