Every Modern Business Needs a Single Source of Truth

Adaptability is the name of the game for modern businesses.

Change has become so constant that 'change management' now feels like just another Tuesday. With every leader driving rethinks and reworks and reorganizations, we're even hearing a call for Chief Stability Officers. But whether you're driving change or trying to protect the well-functioning parts of your organization from all the change junkies, it helps to know how things work now.

You’re more likely to adapt successfully when you understand what needs adapting and can see how far your current state is from your goal.

Some organizations maintain a centralized online repository containing everything employees need to know about how the organization operates. If an employee believes the company should adapt their approach, they can go to this single source of truth and read about how things are meant to work, who to contact with questions, and how to suggest improvements.

While the content varies, these modern operational handbooks (or playbooks) share these traits:

• There's one and only one handbook per organization, which puts the word "single" in Single Source of Truth (SSoT).

• They're digital, providing access to every employee from anywhere.

• They're living. People regularly CRUD the crud out of 'em. Create, read, update, delete: these documents are continuously updated in concert with changes in the workplace.

Remote-first companies, self-managing organizations, and other companies that were early adopters of non-conventional ways of working pioneered this approach to company documentation. Remote-first and remote-only companies discovered that when you can't look around the office to figure out "how things work around here," you’d better have another way to make it easy for folks to figure it out. If you don't, you can't scale since all your newer employees will either drown your team in questions or go rogue and break way too much shiznit.

Clear operational guidebooks make hybrid and remote scaling possible.

To see what these look like, check out these public examples:

• The Handbook from GitLab

• The 37Signals Employee Handbook

• Atlassian's Team Playbook

Companies embracing flatter structures and self-managing teams also found they needed centralized guidebooks, because contrary to what you might suspect, process clarity needs to increase dramatically as you eliminate management layers. At least, that's the case for successful self-managing groups. Otherwise, just like remote teams that haven't clarified their operations, those workplaces devolve into disjointed yahooery right quick. See more about these ideas from Loomio, Buurtzorg, and Mondora

Both all-remote and self-managing organizations must make it fast, easy, and natural for employees to quickly find correct, self-serve answers about how to get things done.

Today, every business shares that same need. Things are changing too fast and too frequently for your communications group to successfully cascade the news. While a few major initiatives may require detailed communication plans and staged rollouts, most operational changes should work more like Google Maps’ real-time traffic updates rather than Apple’s polished iPhone launches.

Today, Every Organization Needs a Living Operational Handbook

I know I’m preaching to the choir. I also know that when I work with more traditionally structured companies, they’re not there yet. Instead, they’re still wrestling with a cacophony of disjointed, siloed systems that are all too outdated or locked up by the gatekeepers to be useful.

So, where do you start? How do you transform a dusty three-ring binder of HR policies into a dynamic, living operational handbook?

Our network of remote operations experts recommended we ask Laurel Farrer. You can listen in on our conversation below. Then, scroll down and share in the comments.

• What strategies have worked well for achieving operational clarity across your organization?

• What challenges have you faced and solved when creating a centralized handbook?

🚀 Episode Title: From Dusty Binders to Living Operational Guidance
🔍 Episode Description: An insider's guide to transforming outdated employee handbooks into modern operational documentation. Learn how established companies can build living knowledge systems that work for everyone - from the warehouse floor to the C-suite.

🎧 Listen Now: here or watch on YouTube here.

👉 Episode Timestamps (45 m total)
00:37 The Importance of Operational Handbooks
02:31 Challenges and Solutions for Remote Work
07:22 Creating Effective Modern Employee Handbooks
24:10 Navigating the Review Process
24:52 Building a Comprehensive Handbook
27:44 Empowering Employees Through Documentation
30:34 Future of Work and Managerial Evolution

🎧 Listen Now: here or watch on YouTube here.

About Laurel

Laurel Farrer is the Founder and CEO of Distribute, an internationally renowned management consulting firm specializing in remote and hybrid work strategies.
Throughout her career, Laurel has collaborated with global organizations and governments to transition business operations from physical to virtual environments, develop products for the remote work market, and leverage workplace flexibility to address global challenges. She's helped brands like Zoom, Microsoft, Gallup, NPR, Logitech, BBC, The New York Times, Vistaprint, Fast Company, Upwork, and more.

To learn more about and connect with Laurel Farrer, visit her website at: distributeconsulting.com

Share Your Expertise

Now we’re all curious to learn from you.

• What strategies have worked well for achieving operational clarity across the organizations in your world?

• What other examples should people know about?

• What challenges have you faced and solved when creating a centralized handbook?

P.S. Speaking of learning from each other, we’ve been puzzling over how to better collaborate with the wide world of workplace experts.

We have an idea. Check this out.

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The New Rules for Work Labs is hosted by Lucid Teams. Learn more about our work with organizations at: lucidteams.com