In Six Sigma, we had the term 'Hidden Factory', which meant it didn't matter what the operations manual said if no one followed it anyway. People would do analysis as if the factory was following the manual and were always confused that the results weren't great. But they never saw the Hidden Factory driven by tribal knowledge.
Having tribal knowledge is useful for operating within the sphere of work, but it can also work to the disadvantage of those outside of the "tribe" in trying to understand it. If it is used in the presence of someone who is not part of the group, it can become a weapon against those who are excluded for whatever reason.
Wiki’s are good if you trust your team/employees. When you get a new hire you have them try to do their job by it and correct anything that’s wrong and add anything missing. I just wrote down my family Christmas recipe that I’ve been tweaking the past 20 years so my titty tribe can make it when I’m sick of doing it.
This is obvious and correct, but I still like the way you said it:
"When you get a new hire you have them try to do their job by it and correct anything that’s wrong and add anything missing."
We did this with the tournament circuit in a manner of speaking, only it was me hovering over their shoulders and asking them what they were doing differently, correcting the document in real time. I think I made a lot of enemies those days.
Goatfury Docs! We used to have a dedicated doc team. They would take the product or the new release, the new feature, and write the user manual or online docs. When we started making the PMs write docs for their own features the product got much better.
I actually did eventually get around to this approach, and we did a decent job of recording the things. I think the company kind of ran out of steam before we could use them for effective training documents, though- we ran like 150 events in total, which sounds like (and is) a ton from one perspective.... but the events were also somewhat unique, and we were constantly trying to draw lessons from each one.
I have a lot of stuff documented at our gyms too, but the pandemic really shuffled our processes around. They all kind of need redoing at some point.
My piece teed up for tomorrow talks about postmortems which are fun after things go exceptionally wrong. Did you ever have an event that went so bad you knew all the rest would be better? I thought of you and almost went down a rabbit hole on that name
In Six Sigma, we had the term 'Hidden Factory', which meant it didn't matter what the operations manual said if no one followed it anyway. People would do analysis as if the factory was following the manual and were always confused that the results weren't great. But they never saw the Hidden Factory driven by tribal knowledge.
That's another very useful phrase. I like it.
I hear infighting in the Tities tribe eventually led to a serious cleavage between them.
I very nearly made a boobie joke, but I am so very glad to see that I didn't need to pump this one up at all.
I personally like to stay abreast of all the dad jokes.
Daniel, you are truly one in a melon.
Aaaaw, you're chest saying that.
I think it's breast if I leave the bewb jokes behind.
Yeah, let's nip them in the bud.
Having tribal knowledge is useful for operating within the sphere of work, but it can also work to the disadvantage of those outside of the "tribe" in trying to understand it. If it is used in the presence of someone who is not part of the group, it can become a weapon against those who are excluded for whatever reason.
Like jargon!
I think Mac/iOS and Windows/Android are tribes.
True, but a lot of those differences have been catalogued now. Maybe this is in the transition phase right now, becoming more formalized or something.
Wiki’s are good if you trust your team/employees. When you get a new hire you have them try to do their job by it and correct anything that’s wrong and add anything missing. I just wrote down my family Christmas recipe that I’ve been tweaking the past 20 years so my titty tribe can make it when I’m sick of doing it.
#tittytribe
That’s the tribe for 2025!
This is obvious and correct, but I still like the way you said it:
"When you get a new hire you have them try to do their job by it and correct anything that’s wrong and add anything missing."
We did this with the tournament circuit in a manner of speaking, only it was me hovering over their shoulders and asking them what they were doing differently, correcting the document in real time. I think I made a lot of enemies those days.
Goatfury Docs! We used to have a dedicated doc team. They would take the product or the new release, the new feature, and write the user manual or online docs. When we started making the PMs write docs for their own features the product got much better.
I actually did eventually get around to this approach, and we did a decent job of recording the things. I think the company kind of ran out of steam before we could use them for effective training documents, though- we ran like 150 events in total, which sounds like (and is) a ton from one perspective.... but the events were also somewhat unique, and we were constantly trying to draw lessons from each one.
I have a lot of stuff documented at our gyms too, but the pandemic really shuffled our processes around. They all kind of need redoing at some point.
My piece teed up for tomorrow talks about postmortems which are fun after things go exceptionally wrong. Did you ever have an event that went so bad you knew all the rest would be better? I thought of you and almost went down a rabbit hole on that name