You’ve got a busy work schedule. Days are filled with meetings, paperwork, and being interrupted by employees with questions.
Now, you are looking to adopt a ScreenSteps knowledge base and the Find & Follow Training Framework. That means you’ll need to create knowledge base articles, training courses, and practice scenarios.
Understandably, you’re feeling overwhelmed. And you can’t help but wonder: “How do I find the time to get all this done?”
While implementing new knowledge base software and a training program is a lot of work, it is doable. And it is worth it. The sooner you launch ScreenSteps, the sooner you see the ROI.
As the Head Consultant at ScreenSteps, I’ve helped dozens of companies launch their ScreenSteps sites. These professionals also had busy schedules but learned how to “find the time” to get things done.
The secret to getting your guides, courses, and practice scenarios created is in these six tips. (And, of course, good old-fashioned work.)
1. Time block
Okay, this strategy may seem obvious. Most likely, you’ve tried blocking out time on your calendar in the past, but it just hasn’t worked. Something more pressing comes up or you take too long figuring out where you’ve left off to make any real progress.
Set aside time every day (ideally at least an hour) to work on creating your materials.
While you should be time-blocking, it isn’t enough on its own.
If you are just blocking your time and not doing these five other strategies, you’re never going to finish. These other five tips will help you be more productive with the time you set aside to create implementation materials.
2. Plan your content
The number one thing that will sabotage you from getting your knowledge base and Find & Follow materials created is not planning.
We recommend every company that implements ScreenSteps — whether they have existing documented procedures or are starting from scratch — hold a Find & Follow Planning Workshop.
If you don’t have a plan or know which digital guides you need to create, you’re going to spend most of your blocked time thinking about what needs to be done next.
When you have an outline of everything that needs to be created, you can get straight to work.
3. Create the article titles in ScreenSteps
Because you already held a Find & Follow Planning Workshop, you already have a list of all the knowledge base articles, training courses, and practice scenarios you need to create.
Take the time to create a knowledge base article for every digital guide on your list. The questions you wrote down in your workshop are the titles of your articles.
What does this do? It makes it so that when you have a spare minute, all you need to do is open a drafted article and start writing it. You don’t need to spend time thinking about what you should write next. You know what needs to be written so you can just start doing it.
For your courses and practice scenarios, you can create PowerPoint presentation files and video script documents to open when you sit down for your blocked ScreenSteps implementation time.
🔎 Related: How much effort does it take to Launch Find & Follow? (3 Options)
4. Be a minimalist
Start with the minimum. By that, I mean don’t put too many details into your guides. Only include the information that is absolutely necessary to help your end-user do something.
We tend to go into too much detail in our guides upfront. When you start writing, you are often extra motivated, so you tend to put extra time and detail into each article. But that’s not what you need.
You need enough details to help the end-user handle a task. Plus, you’re going to burn out on creating your ScreenSteps content sooner if you are spending extra time on every article, video, PowerPoint, etc.
What I’m saying is, if you need an article on “how to update an invoice.” Don’t include everything there is to know about invoices. You don’t need to include what an invoice is, what software you are using, etc. because you assume the end-user already knows that.
You just need to provide instructions on where to click and what to do. For an article like that, it should only take about 10 minutes to write it.
When you approach articles like that, you can use a spare 5-10 minutes to write another article. Check!
🔎 Related: 11 Best Practices For Writing Knowledge Base Articles
5. Find existing content
What existing content do you have?
Upload the file into ScreenSteps or copy and paste it into an article.
This content could be existing standard operating procedures. Or it could be an email or chat message where you explained how to handle a procedure.
While this isn’t the best practice, it at least gets you started with something.
You have an article people can use. You’ll want to return to the article and update it with best practices once you have articles for all of your policies and procedures.
6. Use everyday interactions to create new articles
When people are asking questions, use that as an opportunity to create an article in ScreenSteps.
Instead of responding by writing the instructions in an email or chat message, create a ScreenSteps article. Send the person who asked the question the link to the ScreenSteps article.
Most likely, the questions they are asking should be on your list of articles from your Find & Follow Planning Workshop, so creating that article is already on your to-do list.
By responding by creating a ScreenSteps article, you are checking an item off your to-do list while supporting your end-users. (And you were going to have to respond either way, so we’ll call that a win-win.)
Bonus: Enlist help
In the ideal world, you’ll have someone dedicated full-time to implementing and managing your company knowledge. Of course, that isn’t always the case.
While you can’t create more time in your day, you can enlist others to help you. Assign subject matter experts to create specific guides.
Launch faster with expert coaching
Creating your assets to launch ScreenSteps takes solid planning and discipline. As you start following these six strategies, you’ll be on your way to filling your knowledge base and building your Find & Follow training curriculum.
If it feels like too much of a lift to do on your own, ScreenSteps can help. ScreenSteps has coaching services and implementation packages so that you don’t have to do it all on your own. Companies that use ScreenSteps’ implementation services launch at least 50% faster.
Think you need help implementing and launching ScreenSteps in your organization?
Talk to a ScreenSteps representative to see which implementation package will be right for your company.
