A Dynamic Skill Stack Makes for Better Documentation

 A “talent stack” is a term coined by Dilbert comic creator, Scott Adams. It is the idea that you can combine normal talents to be extraordinary. Scott Adams refers to his own talents where he has used some business knowledge, basic drawing skills, humor, and a strong work ethic to build a world-famous comic series empire.

You too can “stack” your talents for exceptional documentation. If you are an IT professional but happen to be an excellent writer (a rare combination I might add), you can “stack” these talents to create IT documentation that puts you leagues ahead of your teammates. You might have exceptional organizational skills but also are gifted at visual design techniques. In this case, stack your talents to design documentation systems that are engaging and fun to navigate.

While I agree with stacking “talent” when it comes to documentation, no one is born knowing how to document. No one enters the work world, for that matter either, really knowing how to document. Documentation is much more of a “skill” stack than a “talent” stack.

Unfortunately, many managers see the ability to document somewhat like the ability to breathe. (That is, it isn’t exactly unique or special.) Documentation skills are not like “breathing” skills. Breathing is involuntary. But most people are not good at documenting.

Understand the documentation skills that you need in your team and then go find and train for these skills. Your documentation skillset is more than hard technical and professional skills, it is about more illusive things like mindset and personality. You need to hire, train, encourage, and monitor this skill stack to reach your goals.

Here are the key documentation skills that you should build into your team:

Capturing and Note-Taking Skills

Capturing skills are essential for starting the documentation process. You need skills on your team for getting notes, information, materials, etc., into or onto something to start the documentation process. While these skills may seem straightforward, it is surprising how few people do them well.

Your team or company may spend tons of money finding, training, and retaining the best employees and pumping out fees for consultants and contractors. Without great capturing skills, your team is an ideas-sieve. Capturing skills let you harness actions, ideas, and concepts. 

Time Management, Calendar Planning, To-Do List Management

There is a lot of talk of the modern workforce being “knowledge workers” nowadays. But this is an abused term. What we really should be talking about are deliverables or time workers. You need to hire for and train your people to manage deliverables and time.

Documentation skills support, augment, and force time management through breaking down tasks, planning, chunking time, and making your team’s choices more deliberate. There is a strong tie between time management and documentation. Organizing your work, project, or team depends on a foundation of documenting your to-dos.

Writing Skills

Ask yourself: why does your team member book a meeting when she could have written a short memo? Why do your consultants bury their presentations with fancy graphics? Because writing is hard and documentation writing is even harder.   

Your team needs writing skills for smart documentation. This one is a non-starter. Writing skills mean the ability to get things on paper in the first place (and quickly) and the ability to be clear, practical, and captivating. Documentation writing skills are a hybrid that borrow the best from a range of writing disciplines – technical writing (writing for technical fields), copywriting (writing to sell), and blogging (writing to share your expertise and opinions).

Visual Documentation, Formatting, and Diagramming

There are no rules that say your documentation can’t be fun and engaging (yes, even if you are writing an Accounts Payable manual). Stack your team or get access to resources with visual or graphical skills to make your documents pop. Visual techniques such as layout, design, diagramming, process modeling – not to mention basic Word formatting - are essential for good documentation.

Build diagramming into your documentation skillset too. But don’t rush out and buy a fancy course or a complex tool. Diagramming is about practice and practicality, not the rules. Kids are in fact naturals at it, often drawing themselves going to school (process modeling), talking to their friends (data flows), or playing with their toys (use cases).

Basic Storage and Information Management Skills

You need people who know where to put your documentation and how to manage it so that your documentation retains and grows in value over time. Your team probably doesn’t need an Information Management or Information Governance expert. But you probably do need someone with an understanding or willingness to learn key concepts such as information standards, metadata, classification, document systems, workflow, and access.

Many of these skills come with practice, experience, and training (e.g., SharePoint training). But many skills come more from common sense, mindset, and an aptitude (or channeling one’s inner Marie Kondo) to keep your team’s files, drives, and paperwork organized.

Human Psychology

Your team member can be “right” about how lousy the new point-of-sale system is, but he needs tact to write a memo to communicate the deficiencies to your boss. Your team can pump out the strongest reports and repositories, but they will be useless without having connection with your audience.

Documentation requires intuition into knowing what people want to see and hear. It demands an understanding of what makes people tick and how they connect with information. Maybe you need your team to craft a difficult message, sense what intel the C-suite needs, work magic with numbers and tables, or make your audience belly laugh (if not smirk). Let your team members work their unique gifts to solve the problems your team is facing. Use human psychology to make your documentation grab heartstrings, pique mental curiosity, or poke gut-reaction that drives clarity, action, decisions, and performance.