How to Build Team Commitment to Reading Documentation

When I give talks about how to adopt more async communication practices, I spend a significant amount of time on the importance of documentation.?

When discussing how to make information more accessible with a commitment to consistent documentation, I inevitably get questions and comments about how to get others to actually read and follow documentation, such as:

• We document everything, and now there is too much video, too many transcripts, and too much documentation for me to read.?
• Our workplace wiki is where information goes to die.?
• Sometimes we have meetings to review documented standards or decisions because people do not read messages or wiki pages. I hate these meetings.?
• Making information visible is a major pain point. People looking for information are actually resorting to sync communication to find it, defeating the purpose.
• No one has the time or habit to do async reading/work, and it’s difficult to change that.

Everyone has examples of when they’ve spent time writing emails or summaries, just to have someone ask you a question that proves they didn’t read anything you wrote.?It's beyond frustrating!

Sometimes it seems impossible to change habits. But as a leader in a remote or hybrid team, there are absolutely ways to build team commitment to reading documentation and communications. Here are five:

Set Explicit Expectations?

Don’t just set expectations for how to create documentation—you also need to set expectations for how you want your team to use documentation. Where is information supposed to be housed? If someone is CC’d on an email, are they expected to read the entire email? Is everyone expected to read every single update? Are SOPs supposed to be used every single time for a designated process? What happens if someone does not meet expectations? Talk through real-world situations with your team, and be open about how you expect one another to respond if a team member is not following shared team norms.

Model Desired Behaviors

Don’t expect others to read documentation if you don’t set the example yourself. Before reaching out to a team member to ask for information, seek it out on your own. If the information should have been accessible in a designated location and wasn’t, communicate that according to the written expectations you’ve aligned on as a team.?

Hold People Accountable?

Give your team regular opportunities to reflect on their and their teammates’ adherence to team norms related to documentation. This can look like an open-ended discussion question during team meetings or 1:1s or it can be a recurring, simple questionnaire shared on Slack or email.??

Make reading and correctly using documentation part of performance expectations, and provide consistent, constructive feedback if you see gaps.?

Constantly Refer to Documentation?

If someone sends you a message requesting information that you know they have access to and should be able to find, instead of giving the answer directly, refer them to the documentation where the information is housed. If this seems like it would feel uncomfortable, this is why it is so important to have an agreement with your team about how to correct or guide people to use documentation correctly.

Make Information Easy to Access?

People can't use information they can’t find. Consider ensuring that information only be housed in a Single Source of Truth, so people don’t have to search in multiple locations to find the answers they need.?

Additionally, leverage features of the tools that you already use to make information as easy to find as possible, such as bookmarks, dashboards, pinned messages, and automated workflows. For example, if you use Slack, you can pin messages with important links, and you can create custom responses for Slackbot to point team members in the direction of documentation.?

As companies add more communication platforms to their tool stacks, information overload is going to make it even harder to ensure everyone reads documentation. What are some of the ways you’ve improved team habits when it comes to reading documentation???