You’re launching a new knowledge hub in your business.
You don’t want to make mistakes, so you want to get a plan in place first. You are considering running a Find & Follow Workshop, but you don’t want to wait. You are aching to hit the ground running. Won’t a workshop slow you down?
So, do you really need a Find & Follow Workshop? The answer to that question is yes.
As the co-creator of the Find & Follow Framework, I can promise you that businesses that run a Find & Follow Workshop are much more successful at becoming a Find & Follow Organization than those that don’t.
A Find & Follow Workshop is essential in helping you plan and organize how to launch your knowledge base or knowledge ops platform. And I answer that question further in this blog post.
In this blog post, you’ll learn more about the benefits you get from running a Find & Follow Workshop.
Before we dive into the benefits, here is a quick review of what a Find & Follow Workshop is.
What is a Find & Follow Workshop?
A Find & Follow Workshop is a planning session that helps your team determine what knowledge resources they need to support their employees and/or customers. It is part of the Find & Follow Framework, which helps companies transfer knowledge more efficiently to their employees.
Learn more about Find & Follow Workshops here. And download a free guide on how to build your own Find & Follow strategy here.
1. It creates alignment
Often, companies have their operations and training teams working in silos. The problem is that the work the trainers do — training new hires and employees — affects the operations team.
Often, the information new hires learn in training does not prepare them o do the actual tasks they need to perform when on the job. It’s as though they learn to make burgers in training. Then, when they get on the job, they find out they need to make pasta.
That creates confusion for the new hire and frustration for the operations and training departments.
The Find & Follow Workshop helps get both the operations and training teams on the same page and agree on what they need to teach the new hires.
2. Helps you prioritize tasks
When you start a new project, there are hundreds of big and little tasks that need to be done. So, where are you supposed to get started?
A Find & Follow Workshop helps you identify which guides will have the biggest impact on your operations.
Ideally, you want to create all the guides that take up 80% of your employees’ time by the time you launch your knowledge base. We call this an 80% Launch. These 80% articles are the guides you need to prioritize for launch.
3. Helps you understand the scope of a project
During a Find & Follow Workshop, you gain perspective on the size of the project. It helps you understand how heavy of a lift the workload will be.
If you don’t understand everything that needs to be done, it is easy to set unrealistic timelines for your project. By identifying different tasks in the workshop, you can make a more practical plan with a realistic timeline.
4. Helps you determine what digital guides you need
Part of the Find & Follow Workshop is identifying the different tasks and variables within those tasks. Those tasks and variables that you identify become a list of digital guides that you need to create.
We use the Find & Follow Workbook to identify the digital guides, foundational courses, and practice activities. Download a free copy of the Find & Follow Workbook here.
5. Helps you determine your different types of knowledge
During the workshop, you also identify the different processes and concepts. These are the software programs, big-picture processes, and general background overview information that employees would need to know to handle procedures.
Ultimately, this information helps you separate your actionable knowledge, foundational knowledge, and practice activities. This will help you as you plan your training curriculum.
6. Helps you recognize knowledge gaps
Whether you are starting from scratch or have some documented procedures, you most likely have knowledge gaps. Knowledge gaps are what is missing from your documentation. These are the questions that people have that are not answered in your knowledge base.
In a Find & Follow Workshop, you’re not just skimming the surface. Your goal is to dig deeper and talk through every possible task a person in that role would need to do. That means having procedures for every possible outcome.
Typically, this list is longer than people expect. Once they start discussing this with their workshop team, they often realize they only have about 20% of their knowledge documented. The workshop helps you identify everything you need to document.
7. Adds perspective and empathy about tasks
A workshop adds perspective on why it is so hard for new hires to get up and running. It also helps explain why things might feel so chaotic in your organization.
Those who create the knowledge base aren’t necessarily in the trenches. Often, that means these well-intentioned content creators just put what they think is important in the knowledge base. But, then that’s what the frontline workers need.
When you get people to meet, the employees who are on the frontlines can shine a light on what they need. This helps leaders have more empathy for why tasks take time and validate frontline workers’ efforts.
Together leaders and frontline workers can determine what information and resources everyone needs to handle different tasks and situations.
8. Helps you organize your knowledge base
As you build your knowledge base, it can be difficult to know how to organize all the different guides.
The workshop provides clarity on how you should categorize things. It makes it clear how you should group topics so that it is easier for end-users to find the digital guide they need. And that provides more transparency in the company.
Get clarity on what your employees need to do and help them succeed
When you run a Find & Follow Workshop, you are better able to prepare your employees to work confidently, effectively, and independently.
Companies that have adopted the Find & Follow Framework are able to train employees 50% faster, increase employee performance scores, and increase productivity.
Ready to run your own Find & Follow Workshop?
You can run a Find & Follow Workshop on your own or you can hire a ScreenSteps expert to moderate the discussion for your team. Companies that hire ScreenSteps tend to launch 50% faster.
Not sure what to do? Schedule a discovery call with a Find & Follow expert. They can help you decide the best way to approach a Find & Follow Workshop for your organization.
