Letter from the President - May 2016
DISSEMINATING KNOWLEDGE
I’m willing to bet that you know a lot. Even if you are new to your industry you have the valuable perspective of a fresh viewpoint. Those of you who have been in the industry for a longer time will have a lot of knowledge stored in your head.
Mentoring folks is important because it gets some of that knowledge out of your head and into the heads of others. But mentoring is usually seen as a one-to-one relationship. If you are really skilled at what you do, this can create quite a bottleneck. What approaches do you take to spread your knowledge?
One thing I do is make the concerted effort to document the resolution to every support item that is referred to me. Yes, this takes time. Not only do I have to determine the resolution, but then I need to spend an extra 15-30 minutes to write something. Trust me: the effort is worth it.
I usually document resolutions in a wiki on our intranet. The great thing about this approach is that it is a living document that is easy to cross-link. If there is a resolution that can apply to several issues, the resolution can be linked to all of those issues. I’m not really talking about a technical support database. What I am doing with the wiki is effectively creating a best practices manual for specific applications. After a few years of doing this, there is little that hasn’t already been documented in the wiki. The best thing about this is that when an issue comes in, I don’t have to struggle to remember the resolution. I can send the user a link to the specific wiki article. This has ultimately resulted in less time being spent by me on the same issues and has formed quite a store of knowledge that is available to anyone in the company.
Consider the AUGI Forums as just such a resource for disseminating knowledge. If you have a question, you can search the Forums and see if there is a resolution. If you can’t find an answer, then asking the question on the Forums will generate a response that often leads to a resolution. But don’t ignore the value of your own contributions. If you see a question asked on the Forums and you think you have a solution, offer that knowledge. Think of it as mentoring one-to-thousands. Talk about being effective!
On another note, I must announce that Shaun Bryant has stepped down as a director. Shaun has served on the Board for more than five years and the Board will miss his perspective and enthusiasm for AUGI.
