Google Drive is not a knowledge management tool (nor is Slack!)

McKinsey and Interact report that “19.8 percent of business time – the equivalent of one day per working week – is wasted by employees searching for information to do their job effectively.”

Why can't we all recognize that capturing and sharing data—essentially, Knowledge Management (KM)—is crucial for success, especially when so many of us are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data or paperwork?

So many organisations come to Optimi wondering why their investments in common platforms aren’t the lifesavers they thought they’d be. The good news is that it’s not you. If it’s Drive, Slack, Sharepoint or Teams…, you’re not using it wrong, it’s just the wrong tool.

We see many folks simply haven’t invested the time and energy to set up the culture, processes and systems needed to manage the sea of information. Having helped dozens of teams to start sailing (and stop leaving money and time on the table), we have steps you can take.

Already using a true Knowledge Management tool like Notion?

Here’s 8 tips for organisational success.

Before we share four big advantages you can leverage, you might be asking:

What’s the magic tool then?

First step: Understand what the tools you are using are good for and their limits. For instance:

Google Drive – great for storing files and collaborating on documents, but doesn’t allow you to relate knowledge together, manage meta data (like statuses and categories) and searching for things can be a big pain.
Slack – makes it easy to ask people for info, but only works if people are open to being distracted by instant messages and repetitive questions (and have you tried to search? Also a big pain).

Tools for storage, editing and chats are not Knowledge Management tools, necessarily. So if it’s not Drive or Slack, then what?

There’s a bunch of KM tools out there: Notion, Coda, Obsidian, Mem and Upbase, just to name a few. Many are affordable, too!

There’s four big advantages of KM tools you should leverage, once you’ve got one…

1. Make ‘search’ your friend

Too often there’s a big groan when someone is asked to “search for it.” Though search has only improved over the years, especially in KM tools, there’s a reason why many people hesitate to make it their go-to when looking for something. To understand why, let me introduce you to the stages of Knowledge Management helpfully called CODE.

Notice that Capture comes first. Too often key information is simply not written down because we are overwhelmed by the question, “where should I put it?” KM tools like Notion are well designed to allow you to simply jot down that gem of a brainstorm and organise it later, giving you a notes ‘inbox’.

If it’s not written down, you won’t be able to find it. Do you get asked again and again where something is? At least with Slack it makes a noise every time. 😬

If you empower people to search with the right (KM) tools that make it easy to capture and move information around, you’ll have less distracting questions – people can answer for themselves.

2. ‘Perfect’ gets in the way

When organising becomes a job in-and-of itself, you can be sure that the perfect is getting in the way of the good. As CODE suggests, we organise “for actionability.” However, Google Drive and Slack don’t help – their lack of organising structure and flexibility means we spend more time than we should solving problems over and over again; it’s no wonder perfectionism creeps in. Not only is time wasted, but this can stop people from taking simple actions that make for good knowledge management out of nervousness (”I might put it in the wrong place; screw things up”).

Knowledge Management tools allow you to set up your system so that it’s hard to mess up, whether capturing knowledge or organising it, empowering the whole team.

3. Relationships matter

If you create relationships between information sources it makes it far easier to browse and find later. EG, a meeting document has tasks which relate to projects or functional areas of your business. Knowledge Management tools make it simple to link to important resources and automatically leave bread crumbs so that you can intuitively find what you need in context.

To illustrate how valuable this is once set up (this template can do it for you) here’s an example: My team was assigned a new project and I heard there was a task due soon. I needed the due date, but had forgotten the details and project name. No problem: I went to my team page, where the project automatically showed up, and the task was linked therein.

This task was also easy to find in the notes of the meeting where I heard about it.

4. Moving away from work-arounds

True Knowledge Management tools are evolving all the time as we adapt them to our team, our workflows and work styles. You can’t say the same for Google and Slack, especially when the classic work-arounds – using bookmarks, pins or “README” documents – fall apart because they can’t scale (eg, when duplicating files or folders, new hires or departures).

Instead of creating intense, hard to manage manuals, simply adjust the structure of your KM tool so that it is intuitive to team members, encouraging innovation and focus on higher priorities.

It actually isn’t you, it is the technology!

Tools like Google Drive and Slack, not designed for knowledge management, have caused many groups to feel defeated. Beyond storing and accessing information, you can optimise for creating knowledge. When you capture and organise your knowledge, you empower people to take action and data-driven decisions.

This adjustment might sound daunting – another app? – but can actually be a smooth transition and much easier than constantly decluttering the proverbial junk drawer that is most organisations’ shared drives or non-stop Slack notifications with the same old questions.

Google Drive, Slack and tools like them lack key features like intuitive search, easy linking between related content, and scaling as needs change. Tools like we’ve mentioned save time and improve outcomes, getting ‘perfection’ out of the way and info where it needs to go. Check out our 8 tips for organisational success with Notion to see how you can transform your processes.