- 11 Dec, 2025 *
At many growing companies, it can feel like your team is spending more time answering each other’s questions than getting work done. Your day may be filled with questions about how to do something, where to find the latest reference on a topic, or why something is done a certain way.
This isn’t a team problem; it’s a structural liability. Knowledge is scattered across SharePoint, Notion, a folder of Word files, and the noggins of your teammates. And within each of those silos, the documentation exists with little to no organization.
You might hope to fix this by adding a search bar, or asking questions in Slack, or migrating to a new platform. But that alone won’t fix the core problem — it just moves the problem to a new place.
Having everything in one searchabl…
- 11 Dec, 2025 *
At many growing companies, it can feel like your team is spending more time answering each other’s questions than getting work done. Your day may be filled with questions about how to do something, where to find the latest reference on a topic, or why something is done a certain way.
This isn’t a team problem; it’s a structural liability. Knowledge is scattered across SharePoint, Notion, a folder of Word files, and the noggins of your teammates. And within each of those silos, the documentation exists with little to no organization.
You might hope to fix this by adding a search bar, or asking questions in Slack, or migrating to a new platform. But that alone won’t fix the core problem — it just moves the problem to a new place.
Having everything in one searchable place is worthwhile, but you also need to structure the information. Let me share my favorite way of doing this.
Think about user intent: what are they trying to do?
At many companies, digital documentation is the like loose papers shoved in a banker’s box. The box is filled with a mix of technical information, step-by-step instructions, company memos. The information is there, but good luck sorting through it to find what you need.
Good documentation structure starts from asking the question: what do people need? The many questions that people ask fall into one of four categories:
- Tutorial: Can you walk me through how to do this? I’ve never done it before.
- How-to: How do I do this again? I always forget a step.
- Reference: Where can I find information about this topic?
- Explanation: Can you explain why we do things this way?
This framework is known as Diataxis. When we structure information using these four categories, every page of documentation is quickly discoverable and instantly useful. By keeping these chunks of information separate (but linking them to each other), we keep each page focused and purpose-driven.
Good fundamentals are a strategic advantage
Structured documentation is a strategic advantage in at least two ways. When information is structured and easy to find:
- Workers spend less time and mental effort trying to find it. They have more time and energy for productive work.
- Newer tools, like generative and agentic AI, have more context about your company and how you work. The structure allows these tools to reliably distinguish between doc types. (AI demonstrates the truth of garbage in, garbage out.)
Ready to fix your documentation?
Are you ready to stop wasting time answering the same old questions, trying to find documentation across three places, and then finding out that it’s out of date?
I specialize in transforming this operational burden. As a Documentation Systems Specialist, I offer a fixed-fee Knowledge Readiness Audit that delivers:
- A diagnosis of your current knowledge debt.
- A blueprint for implementing the Diataxis framework.
- A clear plan to keep your systems up-to-date and AI-ready.
Let’s work together to turn your team’s knowledge into a strategic asset, not an operational burden.