I totally agree with you, and disagree with the other two commenters here. I think this is a culture and communication difference in companies. I work for a distributed company, Automattic, and we use two tools for information which needs to remembered:
- p2, which is basically a live blog for long-form communication. Each team has one, and important conversations happen there. The informal saying goes, “p2 or it didn’t happen”. Long-form async communication is crucial for distributed work, and slack (or email for that matter) is a very poor tool for the job. (https://wordpress.com/p2/)
- a large wiki built on WordPress (e.g. it’s very easy for anyone to publish changes to it)
Both tools are used extensively at the company because everyone understands that real-time communication doesn’t last. I think the wiki gets a lot of traction because:
- it is integrated into our global search tool.
- People share wiki pages when someone asks a question. (E.g, someone asks me about $topic that I know a lot about, and I share with them the wiki document I already wrote about it.)
- Plus, these are linked to from p2 or slack as needed.
When I start trying to get historical context for something, I’ll use the global search tool and find anything ever written across p2 or the wiki site. That normally gives me a great start for what I’m working on.
I would argue that it is a cultural failing when companies don’t have effective communication and documentation habits. Is it habitual to write that wiki page when finishing your project? Is it habitual to have large, technical conversations in a publicly searchable environment? Is it habitual to summarize important conversations (in slack or from video meetings) on these more accessible tools? Is it normal for everyone to be commenting, editing, and participating? These are all normal for me, and I think a big aspect of that is the existing company culture. (And obviously the tools make it very easy to do.)
I totally agree with you, and disagree with the other two commenters here. I think this is a culture and communication difference in companies.
It definitely is a cultural thing. For example at my present company no-one reads wikis, or email, or chat logs, or even error messages, because that is perceived as "low status" activity. High-status people give a vague idea of the problem then sit back and watch minions scurry about trying to figure it out. The problem is that this senior-manager example is now being emulated at even the lowest levels, so there's no-one left to actually do it.
- p2, which is basically a live blog for long-form communication. Each team has one, and important conversations happen there. The informal saying goes, “p2 or it didn’t happen”. Long-form async communication is crucial for distributed work, and slack (or email for that matter) is a very poor tool for the job. (https://wordpress.com/p2/)
- a large wiki built on WordPress (e.g. it’s very easy for anyone to publish changes to it)
Both tools are used extensively at the company because everyone understands that real-time communication doesn’t last. I think the wiki gets a lot of traction because:
- it is integrated into our global search tool.
- People share wiki pages when someone asks a question. (E.g, someone asks me about $topic that I know a lot about, and I share with them the wiki document I already wrote about it.)
- Plus, these are linked to from p2 or slack as needed.
When I start trying to get historical context for something, I’ll use the global search tool and find anything ever written across p2 or the wiki site. That normally gives me a great start for what I’m working on.
I would argue that it is a cultural failing when companies don’t have effective communication and documentation habits. Is it habitual to write that wiki page when finishing your project? Is it habitual to have large, technical conversations in a publicly searchable environment? Is it habitual to summarize important conversations (in slack or from video meetings) on these more accessible tools? Is it normal for everyone to be commenting, editing, and participating? These are all normal for me, and I think a big aspect of that is the existing company culture. (And obviously the tools make it very easy to do.)