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Article5 min read · 2025

Building Organizational Knowledge Systems

Organizations rarely lack knowledge. They lack access, currency, and ownership.

Every organization I have worked in already possessed most of the knowledge its people needed. It sat in documents, systems, and the heads of a small number of long-tenured staff.

Three things determine whether that knowledge is usable. Access: can someone find it at the moment they need it. Currency: is what they find still true. Ownership: is anyone accountable for the first two.

Ownership is the one that gets skipped, and it is the one that kills these systems. A resource hub with no maintainer is accurate on the day it launches and misleading within a year — which is worse than having nothing, because people trusted it.

The practical consequence: name the maintainer before naming the deliverable. If no one will own it, build something smaller that someone will.

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