Mike Lyons explains that sharing knowledge across teams requires more than written documentation; tacit knowledge often isn't captured by static documents. He recommends collaborative, living documentation (wikis), regular interpersonal knowledge-sharing events (e.g., Tech Talk Tuesday, lunch-and-learns/chalk talks), and recording those sessions so new or remote team members can consume them later.
So knowledge needs to be shared across the teams. So how do we, how do we do that? If we value face to face communication over written documentation? What are some options for sharing information? Certainly talking to each other is great, but we do need, there's always a need for some level of documentation. However, think about like maybe you had a time in your life where you've had to order a cake, maybe go to one of these, these sort of big box stores where you can order a cake from the bakery and they have the little form, you know, the, the paper form you can fill out, sort of write on the form and you might write on the cake, I want sprinkles. And there are just terrible stories of people who have filled out the cake form with all their information and said, I want sprinkles, I want blue and red sprinkles on the cake. And they get their cake to pick it up and someone, you know, the person who created the cake has written, literally, I want sprinkles on the, on the cake itself. They' following written instructions, sort of explicitly following the written instructions. But it's not really, it's not really the knowledge we wanted to share. Sure, it might be exactly what I asked for, but it's not what I thought I want when I order a cake. Sharing knowledge is a little more complex than just writing it down. So what are some tools that you might consider using? Well, I personally am a big fan of using wikis to share information. Wikis are just highly collaborative places where documents are regularly updated and observed and can be modified by anybody on the team. Great place for communication. It doesn't just have to be documentation, it can be pictures, it can be whatever you need to share knowledge across the team. I much prefer a wiki to a sort of shared document repository where maybe, you know, documents are uploaded and checked out and changes made and re uploaded and versioned and that type of thing. Those places tend to just become the arctic tundra of unread documents. We would much rather see people collaborating and sharing knowledge using, using a tool like a wiki, for example. So much of what teams know and understand it just isn't written down. You've ever joined a new team, you know, you know what I'm talking about. We sometimes will do a good job of onboarding new employees. But look, there's just a certain amount of knowledge that comes with time and working with a team. So how might we reduce that time and make it easier for people to get up to speed quickly on teams? Well, I mentioned wikis Wiki is a great place to share that information. But I've been on teams where we'll do things like Tech Talk Tuesday. Every 10 weeks or so, we'll have a Tech Talk Tuesday. You might do it on Wednesday. You call it Tech Talk today if you do. But. And as team members, we would talk about whatever is a hot topic for that team. And it's a great way to get new people engaged to not only learn, but also talk about topics because they bring their own knowledge with them, right? So Tech Talk, that's a way to do it. We would schedule lunch and learns, like Do A. We used to call them chalk talks, like a reference to old chalkboard. We don't so much call them that anymore, but, you know, just a lunch and learn or a brown bag lunch where let's get together and talk about a topic. The point is, you have to be intentional with this stuff, this sort of tacit knowledge that that is, you know, hard to get written out, but comes through other forms. So there's a couple ways that you might consider doing that. Also consider recording these Lunch and Learns or Tech talks. Consider recording them and making those readily available for people to consume, you know, at their own pace, on their own device, at their own time. A lot like the class we're in.
