Most companies have a small number of people who know how everything works. These are the people that answer the questions for new joiners. They write the documentation. They train and onboard new people. They empower and nurture and explain. They’re the busiest and most valuable team members. They’re multipliers for their teams.
Their impact is bounded by the processes of the company and the time they have in the day to work. You can’t put more hours in the day, but there’s a staggering amount you can do to improve the day to day running of your team. The secret? Make your MVPs even more valuable.
Below is an example of what DNS management looks like when you don’t have context, versus when you do. When a senior engineer can share context about the work in the work, the next engineer who stops by won’t have to wonder if these DNS entries are needed. The knowledge is literally right there with him. Our senior engineer’s impact is multiplied by Cord.
If Only They’d Known
Tell me if this scenario sounds familiar:
Some of the more junior people on your team need to do work that relies on knowledge they don’t have. A few key people on the team have this knowledge, but they’re deeply focused on high impact work of their own. The junior people don’t ask for for help and the senior people don’t know they’re blocking the team.
These MVPs are the lifeblood of your company, but their impact is also limited to their own output and the ways in which they can share their knowledge with the team. This is what makes collaborative tools so much more powerful than traditional single-player silo tools. This is why Figma beats Photoshop. Why Notion beats Google Docs.
Put the Knowledge Inside the Work
To maximise the impact your key team members have, you need their knowledge to be discoverable. This is where things like email and Slack often leave teams wanting.
How often does this happen:
Someone new asks a question that has definitely been asked before and answered. People know that there is an answer, but no one can find the answer. Was it in the #general channel? Or was it in a group message?
What if that question had been answered in the place where the work was being done? For example, maybe the question was how to itemize receipts in a confusing expense management tool your company uses.
The question was originally asked in Slack and answered there too, but by the time the next person is asking the same question, that answer is long gone. So, what happens? The next person on the team asks it again. And one of your key team members takes time to answer it or takes the time to search for the answer that they know exists. But it keeps happening! The next person to join after that has the same problem.
As a person trying to run an efficient team, you’re losing massive amounts of value from your key people. They’ve already answered these questions, but their impact is limited by the discoverability of that shared knowledge.
But imagine a world where your key player could answer this question in the expense management tool. What if they could even pin their answer to the top of the confusing UI? Then there’s never a moment where the new joiner has to wonder. The key team member has even more impact because their knowledge doesn’t dissolve into the sands of time.
This Is Why We’re Building Cord
We’re building a collaborative product at Cord not because collaboration is some magical, self-justifying end. Far from it. We’re building collaboration because we understand that businesses succeed when their best people have the greatest possible impact. We want every tool to be one where your multipliers can create the greatest value.
The leaky bucket of company knowledge is where a massive amount of your best team members’ efforts go. They’re constantly filling new people in on context. Walking people through the same steps again and again. Imagine what they could be doing if their input had more staying power? Imagine if that amazing explanation they gave in Slack lived in the tool they were explaining. That’s where Cord takes your team.