Why Your Team Needs a Knowledge Base... and How to Create One

Do you have a "go-to" person on your team who seems to know who to talk to, where to find stuff, and how just about everything works?

It's great if you have that person. But with everyone coming to her with questions all the time, how is she supposed to get her work done? And what happens if she isn't available or (God forbid) leaves your team?

Or you might have a handful of "go-to guys/gals" on your team. How do you disseminate all that knowledge in a way that scales?

Back when I started my first office job, I remember being introduced to the idea of "the work bible". It was a binder where I kept logins, contact info, instructions, how to's. Everything I needed to do my job effectively and efficiently. All the knowledge passed down from those who trained me. I referenced it all the time. And it was invaluable when I left and was able to pass it on to my successor.

Also, my work bible was great. But it didn't scale. Every time someone new came on board, different one-off conversations had to take place with different team members and managers. And who knows if the same information was always covered?

Not to mention, we all know that the first couple of weeks at a new job are like drinking from a firehose. No one can absorb it all.

Well... unless you're Mr. Crabs and you hired SpongeBob, I guess.

Fast forward a few years to December of 2015 when I joined the 20-person marketing team at OutSystems. Just 2 years later, we met in Lisbon, Portugal for our annual Marketing Kick-off Meeting (yes, it's as heavenly as it sounds) -- now with almost 100 marketers in the room!

As part of a "brainstorm ways to make our marketing team more awesome" session during that kick-off, a theme emerged...

Our whole team needs a work bible.

It was one piece of a broader marketing team onboarding initiative. And who better to spearhead this project than our resident go-to gal - Lisa.

And with that, Project Space Leopard was born. Because really, what project is complete without a special code name?

Reasons we decided to host our work bible - officially known as the Marketing Knowledge Base - on Google Sites:

1. Caveman easy. It's literally drag-and-drop easy to build and edit a website with Google Sites. If you can use Google Slides, you can do this.
2. Group project! Multiple people on the team can be logged in at the same time and add/change content.
3. Ohhh-rganize. With the ability to create menus, subpages, and even hidden pages, you can KonMari the shit out of your site in minutes. Ah, I can feel my blood pressure lowering just thinking about it.
4. Keep out, losers. Just like the rest of Google Drive, you say who has access. We've set up our Knowledge Base to require the team to be logged into their work account in order to access it.
5. Embeddy-bye. Any Google doc, spreadsheet, slide deck, form, photo, or video that's hosted in Google Drive (which is what our team uses to organize shared files) are easily shared and linked on the site. Not just shared, but they show up fully and interactively on the page, so you don't have to click out to see actual live content. You can also embed videos from YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia, etc. to play right on the page.
6. Sharing is caring. The ability to share a page or even link to a specific spot on a page, makes it suuuper simple to direct people to the exact content you want them to see.
7. Ugly-proof it. <<Insert heart eyes here>> As a former photographer (and freelance design snob), giving the reins over to other people on projects like this can be hard for me (#trustissues). Thankfully Google makes it almost impossible to make things ugly by locking in default fonts, headers, theme colors/styles, and standard content widths for the entire site, giving it all a nice hard-to-screw-up aesthetic.

(I swear Google's not paying me a commission. But I would not be opposed to it. Psst... Google, I have Venmo.)

To announce the launch of our new Marketing Knowledge Base to our team, I shared this "I love you, but stop asking me" flowchart.

We've received great feedback from the team. The Knowledge Base has become a great self-serve resource for both new and seasoned team members.

I've had to have some tough love moments and remind my team that yes, I love you, and yes, I know the answer, but it's really time y'all learn to fish for yourself.

So please see the chart and go check with your new BFF, the Knowledge Base.

It's important to remember that your site is never really "done". In order to make it an ongoing valuable resource for your team, you have to treat it like a little bonsai tree. You have to get out your little scissors and trim it and keep it watered and updated or no one will want to look at it.

The cool thing is our Knowledge Base has grown much more than we initially expected. Now, lots of sub-teams have even created their own Knowledge Bases and we're seeing even more efficiencies and adoption than we initially had anticipated. For example, our Marketing Ops team has created a whole Campaign Request Center that houses instructions and forms that have streamlined their intake process for new project requests like emails, list uploads, ad campaigns, social sharing, and content and design requests.

Here are some of the benefits we've experienced by having an internal team Knowledge Base.

1. Improved and shortened onboarding experience helps reinforce new team members' decision to join our team.
2. Easy, searchable access to documents, resources, links, and reports takes the hassle out of finding what you need.
3. (One of my personal favorites) Saves time for contributors by giving them the ability to organize and share content once in one single place.
4. Documented processes in a living, non-static format keeps them relevant and up-to-date.
5. Meeting recordings and training videos/materials housed in a centralized location ensures the global team has access to the same news and knowledge.
6. Forms for common requests like starting a process or kicking off a program brings efficiency, shortens process times, and increases productivity.
7. Access to available tools and resources like the acronym dictionary, contact and distribution lists, branding assets and style guides, calendar and meeting tools and best practices, tech tools, travel info, etc. ensures the team is equipped for success.

I hope this has inspired you to consider launching a Knowledge Base of your own. They really are swell.

I'd love to hear your feedback. Does your team have a Knowledge Base or something similar? What other benefits have you experienced? Any tips for adoption? Did I miss anything? What other information would be helpful?