The Problem

Knowledge management within organizations can often become chaotic and inefficient. Without a structured approach, important information may become outdated, inconsistent, or inaccessible. This lack of organization can lead to decreased productivity, miscommunication, and frustration among employees.

The Solution

Establishing a Knowledge Council can streamline knowledge management processes and ensure that information remains accurate, relevant, and easily accessible. A Knowledge Council is a dedicated group responsible for overseeing the creation, maintenance, and governance of knowledge within an organization. With a tool like Guru, and the right stakeholders united around a shared vision, your organization will begin to see immediate efficiency and effectiveness gains from your knowledge program.

Here are the best practices for forming a Knowledge Council and creating governance standards, with tips from our customers from the field.‍

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1. Define the Purpose and Goals

• Clearly articulate the mission and objectives of the Knowledge Council.
• Align the council's goals with the overall strategic goals of the organization.
• Ensure the purpose is well-communicated to all stakeholders.

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2. Assemble the Right Team

• Identify key stakeholders, enablement personnel, and subject matter experts from different departments. In formal or de facto enablement roles, knowledge management is critical to ensuring continuity of experience and information across teams.
• Ensure diverse representation of roles and expertise to cover all aspects of knowledge governance.
• Appoint a dedicated leader or coordinator for the council to drive initiatives and maintain focus on goals.

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3. Define Responsibilities

Each council is different, with different perspectives and use cases represented, so the list of responsibilities is highly situational. Typical examples include:

• Create a Knowledge Council Charter
• Meeting regularly (i.e. monthly) to coordinate on knowledge management strategies and projects.
• Create, monitor, and maintain governance standards (i.e. the set of roles, rules, and workflows that the whole team abides by when using Guru).
• Verify Cards together.
• Creating individual "Collection Champions" who can take ownership and accountability for their Collection's health and maintenance (i.e. Trust Scores, Guru adoption, Card Template creation, etc.).
• Go through the sample Knowledge Council maintenance checklist which can include: checking for and reviewing new/uncategorized tags, the verification progress, Searches Producing/Not Producing Results, popular Cards, Card templates, etc.
• Post Guru "tips" in team communication tools.
• Call out great knowledge contributors and consumers on Slack or in an announcement.
  

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4. Establish Governance Standards

• Implement clear guidelines for content creation, review, and approval processes.
• Define version control through verification and documentation standards.
• Set up regular audits to ensure compliance and identify areas for improvement.

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Examples of Governance Standards

• Trust score no lower than 80% per Collection.
• Average verification interval: quarterly or more frequently.
• > 90% Monthly Adoption.
• Cards that have been left unverified for 60 days will be archived.
• Cards with no views in the past 180 days will be archived.
• Verifiers must always be an individual SME or a small "[TEAM] Expert" Group.
• Cards must have at least one tag, no more than four tags.
• No Card is to be created without being added to at least one folder. If exceptions apply, spell those out.
• Set the expectation among users that Guru is everyone’s first place to search for knowledge.

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5. Provide Training and Resources

• Offer training sessions and resources that cater to the diverse needs of your council members and employees. These tools, combined with clear, documented responsibilities, help council members feel supported in their roles.
  

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6. Encourage Feedback and Continuous Improvement

• Transparency is key—regularly publish reports on collection performance, highlighting areas needing improvement and celebrating successes.
• Use competitions or incentives to encourage volunteers to maintain high standards, with small rewards like vouchers or company swag to keep motivation high.This not only recognizes their efforts but also encourages others to actively participate in maintaining content accuracy.
• Regularly review and update knowledge management practices based on feedback and changing needs.
• Promote a culture of continuous improvement and learning.
• Engage senior stakeholders to demonstrate the benefits of council participation, thereby raising the profile of individuals involved. 

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Customer Spotlight: Ocado Technologies

Ocado Technologies, is the technology arm of Ocado Group, a UK-based company that develops cutting-edge software, robotics, and automation solutions for the grocery industry. They power their own online grocery business and also license their advanced technology to major retailers globally, including Kroger in the U.S. and Coles in Australia. With their end-to-end, highly automated fulfillment systems, Ocado Technologies is transforming the way groceries are delivered worldwide.

Recognizing the critical need to foster innovation and maintain consistency across Ocado’s global operations, Knowledge Manager Helen Bedi saw the importance of a more structured approach to knowledge management.  Following the recommendation of Guru’s Customer Solutions team, Helen established a Knowledge Council to ensure that Ocado’s rapidly evolving and complex technological expertise is effectively captured, shared, and preserved across teams.

Ocado’s Approach

1. Define purpose and goals: According to Helen, “Having a council helped us as Admins to onboard users and authors, provide enablement, new feature announcements, and maintain knowledge health of each collection.” 

2. Assemble the right team: Ocado’s Knowledge Council is made up of employees from different departments in different locations, each with assigned ownership of specific parts of their knowledge base

3. Define responsibilities & establish standards: They maintain engagement through regular initiatives and competitions. Helen noted, "We kicked this initiative off by having a competition for each champion(s) of the collection to get their collection trust score up to / above 80% to be entered into a prize draw."

4. Provide Training: Helen established a dedicated Slack channel and provided ongoing enablement through top-tip messages and new feature announcements. These tools, combined with clear, documented responsibilities, helped council members feel supported in their roles.‍

5. Encourage Feedback: Helen also instituted a "Champion of the Month" award for high performing council members. This not only recognizes their efforts but also encourages others to actively participate in maintaining content accuracy.

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Template: Knowledge Council Charter

Use this template to center knowledge council stakeholders around the purpose of the council and how you'll collaborate. 

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Introducing [your company's name] Knowledge Council

Document the mission of your knowledge council in a Guru Card.

A knowledge council is a group of representatives from each of the departments or teams that are using Guru, who meet regularly to collaborate, share best practices, and maintain Guru at the highest level to ensure it's serving the needs of each and every department. This article includes:

• Guru Maintenance Goals
• Governance Standards
• Council Responsibilities
• Knowledge Council Members
• Methods of Communication

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Guru Maintenance Goals

It's useful to set a clear set of expectations for how you want your content team to approach your team's knowledge in Guru. Below we list an example set of standards (feel free to adjust them for your team).

In order to maintain trusted collateral and content in Guru, we will uphold the following standards for all Cards and content:

• Trust score no lower than 80%.
• Average verification interval: quarterly +.
• 80% of Cards are tagged for easy search.
• User adoption: >90%.

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Guru Governance Standards

Governance standards are the set of roles, rules, and workflows created and implemented by a knowledge council that the whole team abides by in their use of Guru. Card authors and Collection owners follow governance standards to create and manage knowledge in Guru. Note: If you decide that each individual team using Guru should have their own unique governance strategy, document in Guru accordingly!

• Cards that have been unverified for 30 days will be archived.
• Cards with no views in the past 180 days will be archived.
• Content must be owned/verified byt
  • Team (vs. individual) Useful for spread out the ownership and make verification quicker (many hands make light work); however, be careful that users don't think "someone else in the group will do it".
  • Individual (vs. team) Useful for putting responsibility on the actual expert and ensuring active participation as "it's all on you".
• No Card to be created without at least one tag associated.
• No Card to be created without being added to at least one folder, some exceptions may apply.
• All Collection owners are responsible for Cards and folders under their team's ownership including the standards above.

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Knowledge Council Responsibilities

Check on and take actions to maintain governance standards (examples listed below).

• Assigning knowledge domain owners and holding them accountable for items like Trust Scores, adoption, and Card template creation.
• Going through the suggested maintenance checklist and taking cohesive and consistent action on knowledge analytics.
• Meeting regularly (i.e., monthly) to coordinate on knowledge management projects and boost internal Trust Scores/adoption rates.
• Communicating with your Guru CSM or engaging with the Guru Community for consultation.
• Help to build a team culture around knowledge by reinforcing that Guru is everyone’s first place search for info.

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Knowledge Council Members

Identify knowledge council stakeholders and responsible individuals so team members know who is in charge of maintenance efforts and where to find SMEs.

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Collection Champion: The person ultimately responsible for the health and organization of a Collection and ensuring the Collection meets the standards created by the knowledge council. Champions could be active members of the knowledge council or be assigned by the council.

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Folder-level SMEs: Not likely attendees of knowledge council meetings, but create and/or manage Card content. Primarily responsible for fielding questions about their content area via Ask an Expert or Slack, and for ensuring their folder meets the KC’s standards.

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Methods of Communication

Keep your knowledge council engaged by defining in-person (or virtual) and async ways to collaborate. Offer recommendations for automated workflows to make maintenance manageable.

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Have feedback for our Knowledge Council?

Share your ideas in [insert example Slack Channel name and link].

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Related Links

I.e. a link to this project in your project management software.

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Template: Knowledge Council Maintenance Checklist

Use this template as a group for your Council to monitor Wiki health and maintain your organization's knowledge in Guru.

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Collection Health

To make maintenance easier, consider:

• Setting up automated Guru workflows with Zapier or Workato (i.e., send Trust Score updates to Slack or Create tasks for unverified Cards in project management software)
• Saving a Card Manager filter to easily review your Collection.
• Scheduling Guru analytics reports to get insights about your Collection.

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Weekly Maintenance

Manage Collection Trust Score

• Are there any unverified Cards?
  • If a Card is unverified:
    • Click to see the verification interval of the Card.
    • Check the verifier: Who is the verifier of the card and is that person still the correct subject matter expert?
      • If the verifier is correct, check in with them and understand what support they need to verify their cards in a timely manner
      • If the verifier is incorrect, reassign it to the expert in your respective collection
    • If you’re unsure who should verify the Card, use Card commenting to communicate with the author, expert, or new verifier to get everyone on the same page
• Check the content of the Card
  • If the verifier is correct (and it's you!)—review the content. Is everything in this Card still up to date and accurate? Do you need to edit certain parts of the Card?
• Check out the verification interval
  • If the knowledge on the Card is evergreen and doesn't change often (i.e. favorite places to grab lunch around the office) you can adjust the interval to a longer time (this will automatically verify the Card).
  • In Card Manager, filter Cards by: Verification State > is > Untrusted AND Last Verified Date > more than > 90 Days Ago.
• Are people viewing this Card?
  • Click the horizontal ellipses ("⋯") at the top of the Card to open the More options menu and click Usage and analytics. to see "Card views over time". If no one's viewing this Card, consider archiving it.
  • In Card Manager, find unused knowledge by filtering the Cards by: Last Viewed > More than > 180 Days Ago. Find static knowledge by filtering the Cards by: Last Modified Date > more than > 180 Days Ago.

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Organize Content

• Check for "[Legacy] Cards not on a Board" in Card Manager—decide if it makes sense to rename this folder or move the Cards into a different folder. (This folder can only be found in Guru workspaces created before June 2023.)
• Ensure there is no duplicate content by using duplicate detection.
• Use tag manager to check for new/uncategorized tags.

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Encourage the use of Guru

• Review analytics for your most popular (viewed) Cards and advertise to the team (post in Slack or use an announcement).
• Celebrate top Card users in Slack.

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Monthly Maintenance

Structure content

• Walk through your Collection experience—Does the folder structure in your Collection make sense for someone viewing your collection for the first time?

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Update permissions

• Are the subject matter experts who create content in your Collections in the appropriate Guru Group(s) with the appropriate roles?
• Is there private knowledge that other groups need to access? If so, adjust folder permissions.

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Fill in knowledge gaps

• Look at Knowledge Usage analytics, specifically searches producing no results. Is there a Card that could be created based on these gaps?
  • Assign authors to create content to fill these gaps.