Corporate Strategy
Corporate Strategy
201. How to Documentation in 3 Easy Steps
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We swap aliases for real names, thank new YouTube subscribers and Patreon supporters, and weigh Discord’s privacy risks before diving into a full blueprint for documentation that actually gets used. From biathlon analogies to AEO tactics, we map how to build living docs that reduce chaos and speed up onboarding.
• live show update and community shoutouts
• discord verification risks and alternatives
• vibe check and the chaos scale at work
• winter olympics biathlon and mountaineering analogies
• proactive vs just-in-time documentation
• video-first tutorials with searchable transcripts
• confluence labels, ownership, and review cadence
• reducing tribal knowledge and speeding onboarding
• AEO for AI-friendly, accurate documentation
• testing docs with real users and feedback loops
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and join our Patreon to support the show. Join our Discord for now to get live notifications while we evaluate safer community options. “If you’d like to support the show, check the link tree, go to our Patreon, sign up, and support us.”
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Well, the song cuts off. We're still working out. We're working out the so many bugs. Welcome back to Corporate Strategy, the podcast that could have been an email, the live show podcast, video stream, audio feed, direct to wherever you're watching us. I'm the artist formerly known as Bruce, now known as simply Anthony.
SPEAKER_00:And I am rest in peace, Clark, Michael. Why did Clark die? I feel like to move on and to get into this new chapter of Corporate Strategy the podcast, we have to kill our old selves and welcome in our real selves.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, okay. Just bring on the mild.
SPEAKER_00:Actually, in Discord, I named it Michael R. Ip Clark.
SPEAKER_02:I did I did something similar. I did do something similar. Yeah, I did. Okay, so I'm I'm criticizing you, but in the Discord.
SPEAKER_00:You did the same thing.
SPEAKER_02:I did the same exact thing.
SPEAKER_00:That's probably I thought I was original when I did it. I probably subconsciously saw yours out of like the corner of my eye and decided to do it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. You know, great minds think alike. They do.
SPEAKER_00:In the closer proximity, I think it works that way. You just start having the same thoughts. That's true. So now that we're this close, it's not the distance we were before.
SPEAKER_02:That's right. I think now that we have this actual weird, I feel your aura. Yeah, you're it's bleeding onto me.
SPEAKER_00:You're practically touching me.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's it's wigging me out a little bit. Um, I am redrinking my cup of dirt here. It is disgusting.
SPEAKER_00:Actually, there were some there's some comments that people made to me of like, what is he drinking and why does he hate it so much? Do you care to explain yourself?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so uh it's a little it's a midday pick-me-up, but it's also great for the brain. So it is a combination of instant coffee and dark chocolate and water mixed together. I forgot to put honey in it, but it's not like that helps.
SPEAKER_00:So wait, wait, wait. Do you actually do something with the grounds, or is it like instant coffee and then a little bit of water, and then you just swirl around.
SPEAKER_02:And a little bit of in some dark chocolate wafers, and then I use a little tool, and it right into this muddy-looking swill here. I mean, it sounds good. It's not.
SPEAKER_00:But every time you drink it, you make a face like it's the worst thing you've ever tasted.
SPEAKER_02:It's actively awful. So uh I will say there is a there is a secret recipe that I make, which is the it's the bulletproof coffee. You take you take instant coffee and um so let's say you do a teaspoon of instant coffee, you do a teaspoon of either syrup or sugar, okay, and you fill whatever your glass is, just the bottom, and you take boiling hot water and you only cover enough, right? So, like you want to fill the water to the same level of volume as the muck that is in there.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:It's just a tiny tiny, tiny bit of hot water. Then you take your thing, you stick it in there, and what happens is because there's not a lot of water, but there is the sugar in the coffee, it froths. Oh it froths up into a foam, and the foam is actually delicious because the sugar and the coffee blend really well.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And it's it's great. And then you take a creamer, you pour it in there, and you got yourself a delicious, it's called bulletproof coffee. It's great, absolutely great. You throw an ice cube in there, mmm, delicious.
SPEAKER_00:I love it.
SPEAKER_02:It is, it is kind of like a shock to the senses because it is so much sugar just in your system instantly, but uh it's really good. I don't have any creamer though, so I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna do chocolate. Just do a straight one. Yeah. And the chocolate's good because it it stimulates the mind. And I want to be, I want to be stimulated when I'm on this. I need you to be sharp.
SPEAKER_00:If we're doing this live, I need you to be sharp. I need you to be with it.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:I think we make this a recurring segment where you just tell us some weird combination of things that you drink and partially hate everything sometimes love.
SPEAKER_02:A different drink. Next week there'll be a celery stick in here.
SPEAKER_00:Well, this man did teach me how to make an old-fashioned. I did. And a couple other things. So I think everybody would benefit from the tips.
SPEAKER_02:It's the uh it's the Anthony recipe hour. We're we're transitioning out of uh self-help career advice into drink mixtures. I mean, everyone needs to be. You don't get to taste. You just get to hear me describe. You don't touch this.
SPEAKER_00:It's even worse for people that are watching this because they can't even see your reaction after you drink it.
SPEAKER_02:That's true, that's true. Our our audio only guests are missing out. And you know what? I'm gonna I'm gonna before we get into something. I gotta I gotta make a shout-out. So last week we started this live show. It's video, our YouTube, we got a ton of subscriptions. Which is great. It was awesome. It's fantastic. Thank you to everyone who subscribed or watched the live show after it happened. I think there was some hundred views.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think it was like three to four hundred.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, like, why we don't get those downloads on the audio feed. So thank you, one, for watching. But then double shout-outs for those of you that signed up for the Patreon. So we have two Patreon subscribers. Let's go! Uh, shout-outs especially to our uh Marine Engineer friend who's been on the pod before, also named Michael, which is now very confusing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we can't bring you back on because of that, actually.
SPEAKER_02:Our first corporate strategy tier subscriber on Patreon. That's awesome. Shout outs, shout-outs, Michael. You are the corporate strategy. Welcome to the club.
SPEAKER_00:I love it. Yeah, this new tier is gonna be a lot of fun. And I encourage everybody, you can actually for free just join the Discord. That's right. Which we did talk about maybe.
SPEAKER_02:We we need to do it. Okay, well, let's save that for a second.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, we'll we'll do it.
SPEAKER_02:Get through, get through everything else, and then we'll come back to Discord.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so we're we're, you know, I do have like a, you know, we always talk about, and for years, if you've been listening to us, you've heard this over and over again. We're gonna do this recurring bit every single podcast, and then we kill the segment like two episodes later. But I do have a random thing I want to talk about, but first should we do vibe checks? Yes, yes in person.
SPEAKER_02:And uh let's let's just talk about Discord just briefly before we get into vibe check. Because Discord is currently having what we like to call in the industry a time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And uh it seems like the future of this platform is in grave danger.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:A lot of privacy risks, a lot of just uh unknown behaviors happening from Discord's corporate leadership. Now, we would love for them to walk back everything that they plan on doing, but uh given what happened in the UK, do you know what happened in the UK?
SPEAKER_00:So I briefly know, but if you want to explain it just for anyone listening.
SPEAKER_02:So Discord is starting this thing that a lot of uh websites are doing now where they want a either ID or facial scan in order to use the platform.
SPEAKER_00:Bots is likely why. Right.
SPEAKER_02:You'd think because they're looking at IPO and they want to, what's my real user count? But also, uh, when they did this in the UK, not months later, they were hacked. Uh well, technically their third-party authentication vendor, Zendesk, was hacked.
SPEAKER_01:Oh wow.
SPEAKER_02:At least 70,000 IDs were compromised. But research indicates it was probably more around 5 million.
SPEAKER_00:Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_02:So, uh, because they're gonna be rolling this out globally, and I don't want to subject our precious viewers and listeners and subscribers to a platform that could potentially be uh just completely mishandling your data. We will be investigating other options, potentially even self-hosted. So I I will be taking this on and looking into this. Rest assured, we will find a solution before this crumbles into ashes. So that's the update on this. For now, you can continue to join the Discord and get Discord perks as a Patreon subscriber. But we will we will balance this out, and we also, for our corporate strategist subscribers, we will offer uh additional content, right? Which we are planning and figuring out at the moment, and you will be receiving that soon.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah, it's well, first of all, shout out to my wife who said Discord is a weird platform, no one knows what that is. That was her first response when we wrote that.
SPEAKER_02:It's true. I mean, it's for gamers, so I assume all of our listeners are like me in the video, they're not.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I mean, I've been on Discord for a long time, and so so have you. So I I figured like this is a thing that people do, I see it on podcasts. So this is a really popular platform, but I think given the situation, yeah, and given my wife's comment of people think this is weird, and now that we're mainstream, I think we actually may have to just quickly switch to something else. Yes.
SPEAKER_02:Well before we get any larger, there are there are a lot of good options, there are a lot of alternatives, and there's also self-hosted, which I have the capability of doing, so we we might just pursue a private owned solution. But we'll we'll see. Yeah, more to come soon.
SPEAKER_00:I love it. Yeah. Well, vibe check.
SPEAKER_02:Hey, let's give a before we do vibe check. I know I'm I keep stopping you.
SPEAKER_00:I feel like this is gonna be every episode.
SPEAKER_02:Hey, stop, stop your plan. Shoutouts to the people in the chat. We got Kiteales, my wife. We got Elmer Futterino. Let's go. We got uh Iica in the chat. Welcome back. Welcome back. Thanks for joining us. I love it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, a random live stream because we didn't tell people we were doing this. No, we did like minutes ago, like we're going live.
SPEAKER_02:I texted, I texted you at like 12. Like, hey, I need to book the event. What time will you be here? And then you weren't here at that time.
SPEAKER_00:And then three hours later, I attempted. I used to live over here. I attempted to make a five-minute, what used to be a five-minute drive over here. It took me 20 minutes. This place has gotten disgusting traffic-wise, and I am not a fan. I am so happy I moved away.
SPEAKER_02:It's you came over at going home from school traffic.
SPEAKER_00:I didn't even think about it.
SPEAKER_02:We live uh within like the perfect triangle of all of the schools in the entirety of Florida are in our location.
SPEAKER_00:So yeah, it's changed a lot since I've had a commute over here.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:But I'm happy to be here.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, we also have Michael in the chat. Shouts, Michael.
SPEAKER_00:Our number one. Our number one. I love it.
SPEAKER_02:Love it. Well, go ahead.
SPEAKER_00:Uh vibe check 3. Uh terrible. Uh, traffic was awful, and I never want to do that again at this time. So we're gonna have to find a better time to do this where I'm not gonna hit after school traffic. Good plan.
SPEAKER_02:Good plan. Um, yeah, I don't know what the time for this is going to be recurring. Yeah, we're gonna have to figure that out. We'll figure it out. We'll get it, we'll get it sorted. This is we're learning. This is this is so outside of the norm for all of us. It absolutely is. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, everything else for Vajek. I think everything else is going well. Yeah, nothing too exciting going on my end of the last week. It's been a little slow. I've been watching a little Olympics, which is the next thing I want to talk about. Random winter winter Olympics are ongoing in Italy. Italy? Italy. I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna do it because last time.
SPEAKER_02:What if I give you a pass?
SPEAKER_00:No, I'm not you're gonna get you're gonna save me from being canceled because of your heritage.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I I am allowed. As a third generation Italian American, I am allowed.
SPEAKER_00:But the Olympics are going on. Yeah. They are awesome. Are they? And all weird at the same time. Okay. And that's what I want to talk about next after we get how how you're doing.
SPEAKER_02:I am so curious. Uh now now I want I don't care how I'm doing. I want to talk about the Olympics. Uh, I'm doing well. It's it's been it's been a little bit of a chaos week. I feel like I wasn't as prepared for this one as I was last week. And that's on me, but there's just been a lot of chaos. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It's been a lot of chaos. Well, what's the chaos? Is it work? Is it personal?
SPEAKER_02:Oh man, it's it's uh it's everything. Everything is chaos all the time these days. Oh, good. And I I feel that uh I would I would love for either work or the world or anything to be just a little bit less. If we could just turn down the knobs of chaos.
SPEAKER_00:Would you say it's at like an eight? You need it to be at like a four.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. I would love that, actually. That would be ultra desirable for me if we could take the eight down to a four, just in in life in general.
SPEAKER_00:You should just send a blast an email to everyone you work with.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And say, listen, this last week was like an eight. I need it to be a four. I need it to be a four. Just send that, but send nothing else. Don't get any other context.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, that is what I, you know, I'm gonna send that email. Right right when we're done here, I'm gonna log in to my my corporate laptop and say, guys, all of you collectively, put it down. Direct all.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, at all. Notify and notify everyone. Yes, notify everyone.
SPEAKER_02:CEO, doesn't matter. This week was an eight. I need next week at a four. Is that possible? Send.
SPEAKER_00:I wish we could do that more often. Of like, I wish everybody, like every day on your Slack or Teams or whatever you use, you could put like a number you're at. Oh. And then you know it's like, I'm gonna leave Anthony alone because obviously he's going through something.
SPEAKER_02:I'm gonna I'm gonna share a secret. I'm gonna share a secret with you. Um, so we use uh we use a platform for our HR stuff, and whenever I have to log into it, it asks me, How are you doing?
SPEAKER_01:Really?
SPEAKER_02:And it gives me five little faces to choose from. Kind of like you're the doctor's office. Yeah. How how bad does your tummy hurt on a scale of one to dead? And every time I see this little notification, I just pick the saddest looking face. Because, because, like, firstly, firstly, don't ask me that question digitally. No, like if if you say, hey, how are you? I want, you know, I'll tell you if I'm doing well, I'm doing, I'll tell you I'm doing well. If I'm not doing well, I'll tell you I'm not doing well. But it feels so insincere when I'm logging into an HR platform to be like, hey, how are you doing? Happy face, meh face, sad face. I'm like, I'm picking the sad every time. I'm hoping I'm taking like the overall data. I was gonna say, like, just turn it off.
SPEAKER_00:You're skewing something bad. Or really quickly, it's gonna be like, Mark from HR is up for the chat. Do you need to talk about something, Anthony? You've rated yourself zero stars for eight days in a row.
SPEAKER_02:I could be on like cloud nine, having the best day of my life, and I'm gonna pick that sad face every time.
SPEAKER_00:Mark's gonna come in and be like, so what's going on? I'd be like, I'm great. I'm great, how are you? But your but your data says you're doing awful. Yeah, maybe we shouldn't use that. You ever think about that, Mark? From HR? I love that so much. Well, good. Yeah, I can't wait for you to send that email and see the reaction. Okay. I would respect that. If someone sent that to me, I'd be like, oh, I get it. Yeah, let's see if we can tone it down next week.
SPEAKER_02:I think uh I think you and I would both respect that if we received that from anybody. I think everyone else we know in our life would be like, what is this? Are they about to fire him?
SPEAKER_00:I wish I could like, I wish I could go into meetings and someone was just acting up too much, and I could be like, listen, you're at like a seven. I need you to be a three.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That's like one, the doucheest thing ever, but also like the funniest thing ever.
SPEAKER_02:I don't think it is. I really don't think it is. I think it is a great way to quickly give someone like a little bit of a check. You know, because I think most of the time, if you're gonna tell someone their number, like, hey, right now, you know, I'm I'm operating at an 8-ish right now on the intensity energy scale, you know, I'd you know, I'd give you like a maybe a 6-7. I think six, seven, you are always a little bit less than me. You balance out the chaos I bring. But, you know, if someone was like, hey, Anthony, on the podcast, you were really operating at a 10. And it like it just made it really distracting and hard to get through. Like, could you bring it down to an eight? I'd be like, that's actually really good feedback for me. Absolutely. I I need that. So I would I would love if we brought this in.
SPEAKER_00:Feedback rating. Yeah. Like, how's the presentation going? What if everybody AI product? AI something is just listening to the conversation, is giving you a live rating of like, okay, six. Where are you at right now? You need to get to a seven, okay. Bring up the energy a little bit, and then everybody at the table could vote. This is at any moment. Flip your slider, zero to ten. How are you feeling right now?
SPEAKER_02:This is not a bad idea.
SPEAKER_00:I actually kind of love this idea.
SPEAKER_02:It kind of is. And I mean, if you're a presenter, if you're if you're showing up to meetings, if you're doing anything where you have to have an energy level, it it would kind of be good to just top right corner of your screen, oh yeah, yeah. I'm within the reasonable threshold of where I need to be at energy-wise for this. Because like, if you're if you're about to have a one-on-one with one of your directs, and you're about to tell them, like, hey, you're not really you're not really exceeding at what we need you to be exceeding at. You don't want to be at an eight.
unknown:Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02:You need to be at like a four. A three or four. A three or four, right? Like the lower the better on that one. There needs to be some somber, slow, low, calm.
SPEAKER_00:Yep.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I love this idea.
SPEAKER_00:It could be really, really interesting. Sentiment analysis. Yeah. Someone, someone tell us how to patent things.
SPEAKER_02:Three 333, Friday, February 20th. We're patenting this. We're we're saying that we own this idea. It's not patented, but we own it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we own the idea. So if you're going to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_02:So when this shows up in Cork 10 years from now. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:AI sentiment analysis for meetings at corporate.
SPEAKER_02:Ooh, I love that you just assigned all of the buzzwords to it.
SPEAKER_00:We could sell that right now. We actually have a lot of money out of this.
SPEAKER_02:We could stop this, go build a pitch deck, and probably get VC funding before the end of the day.
SPEAKER_00:100%.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_00:Well, good. I'm happy to know how we're doing today. I think we're doing great. I think your energy level is great. Okay.
SPEAKER_02:Well, it's the it's the mud.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, is that what it is? That's how you get there. Betray. I want to talk to you about something. I saw something wild today. Okay. For the Winter Olympics. This is the topic. No, this is not the topic. This is this is like the recurring segment that we say we're going to do, and then we're never going to do it again. Okay. Okay. We'll do a random sports fact for the day.
SPEAKER_02:Oh.
SPEAKER_00:Have you watched any of the Olympics?
SPEAKER_02:Not a thing.
SPEAKER_00:Are you aware of the sports that are in the Olympics? Because there are some wild sports.
SPEAKER_02:There's uh there is okay. I'm just gonna take a this is this is uh a test. Skiing, yes, loging, yep, curling, yep, uh cross cross-trekking with the gun.
SPEAKER_00:That's what I want to talk about.
SPEAKER_02:The gun.
SPEAKER_00:I have never seen this before. It's called a biathlon. Biathlon, that's it. It's called a biathlon. People, this is the craziest thing I've ever seen. Like literally, people have to go cross-country skiing. Yes. Like nine and a half, almost ten miles. I don't know how many kilometers that is, but it's a long ski. And in the middle of the ski, like four kilometers in, they got to get down to a prone position, take their skis off, whip a gun out, a rifle from on their back, yeah, and hit five targets with eight shots. And then they move on to the next one. And if you miss.
SPEAKER_02:Wait, did you say they have to hit five targets with eight shots?
SPEAKER_00:So they had eight shots to hit five targets. I said it backwards.
SPEAKER_02:No, no, you said it right.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. I I was just envisioning the opposite. Like five shots, you gotta hit eight targets.
SPEAKER_00:Like you gotta like ding. It's absolutely wild. It's like you're cross-country skiing. Like you're working out hard. Okay. You get to the spot, you whip the skis off, you pull out a rifle, and there's five targets, and you have eight shots to hit them. And so your goal is, and the thing is, is there's like individual one at a time, uh-huh. But then there's there's this thing, I forget what it's called, like mass start, where 30 dudes just go at the same exact time. And the videos are the wildest thing because it's like, oh, they're just skiing. And then you like zoom into the back of them and you see these rifles, and they get to their first spot, they all go prone and are like sniping. Put the rifle back on four more kilometers, do it again. People who miss the targets have to do a penalty lap. They gotta go again if you miss it. Yeah, it's crazy.
SPEAKER_02:So I I saw a picture of the gun. Yeah, and it looks like it's the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life.
SPEAKER_00:It's like a perfectly like chrome, it's got a little arm hook to it. It's crazy.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, it looks like something like out of Marvel, yeah, kind of like totally collapsible. It's like you know, like it makes a Transformers noise when you whip that thing around. It's very cool.
SPEAKER_00:It was absolutely like I watched the videos and I'm like, this is the wildest sport I have ever seen in my life. Like, this is a thing in the Olympics. Like, there's other sports that are just normal sports that aren't in the Olympics, but this is. How long have they been doing this?
SPEAKER_02:This biathlon.
SPEAKER_00:So I guess it's it started. Uh, I didn't do too much research. So if anyone in the chat Good job, good job. Yeah, I looked up a few things. I guess it started, it was either like in Russia or something like that, and they did it as military training of like you have to go over these crazy terrains. That makes sense. And then you gotta be able to snipe. And so it was like military training. It became, as they were training, like super competitive. And they're like, this is actually like a sport. This is a sport that we can compete in. Yeah, and that's how it all started. I love it. Look up Mass Start Biathlon, and you will be like, what in the world did I just watch?
SPEAKER_02:How long uh time-wise is uh biathlon?
SPEAKER_00:I think when I was looking at like the time, some dudes were doing it in like under 30 minutes. So like nine and a half miles on skis, three stops, you gotta do two prone, one standing. So like you get to the last one and you're just on your skis standing sideways, trying to snipe these five targets.
SPEAKER_02:Are you are you actually skiing?
SPEAKER_00:So you s no, you're not moving. So you ski to your spot, but in the last one you have to be standing. You stop and then you have to your skis stay straight and you like you turn your body.
SPEAKER_02:So weird, tangentially. I've been playing this game that I I just I have to gush about for a second. And there's there's a reason. Uh it's called Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. It is a simulation of what it was like to live in the Czech Republic in 1400.
SPEAKER_00:Interesting.
SPEAKER_02:Super, super like this game is magical, but that's not why I'm bringing it up. One of the activities they did back then is horseback archery. I've seen that. Yeah, you would be on a horse and they'd have a little course with targets and little straw men, and you'd move around and like hit things. Yeah, but you have to do it within a certain time. So, like, there is it's a race where you're also archery. Yeah, and it is so stressful in the game. I can't imagine what it's like to do this in real life with an actual physical animal and a bow. But like, this is what people used to do for fun, and I can just I'm just like, we should bring this back. 100%. We should bring this back.
SPEAKER_00:I feel like, at least in America, like we've gotten so like hyper focused on train the children in one specialized thing. They only are good at this thing, get really, really good at this one thing. And like you see these Olympic sports, and like, no, no, no, you've got to be good at like four things to even compete in this. It is the most wild thing ever. The second one I saw that is also wild. So I think it's called uh cross country mountaineering. And so, you know, like downhill skiing is like you know, you ski, you dodge, you go through the pylines. Mountaineering is You have to sprint up a hill with your skis on. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Cause you're like, you're kind of like.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And then the finish is you go down the hill and you ski. So you like earn your right. You work as hard as you can, and then you let gravity like take you down the hill.
SPEAKER_02:Someone much smarter than us can probably tell us, but I don't I feel like skis weren't invented just for the downhill. They were, they were created because it was the optimal way to move through snow. It's like snow shoes. Up, down, you know, parallel or you know, horizontal. They're they're uh a masterful invention.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's like you spread your weight over the the amount of space, and anyway, you can go up the snow more. But the the trek up the hill is crazy. It's like, hey, go around this pyramid octagon thing. You gotta avoid these little uh things and obstacles in your way. And then at one point they have a set of stairs. And they're like, all right, you're gonna stop with your skis on, you're gonna take the skis off, put them on your backpack, run like sprint up the stairs as fast as you can, get back on your skis, sprint in your skis. I'm talking sprint because you're literally running, and then you get to go downhill. Like you've got to be so dead by the time you're up this hill, and then you've got to ski all the way down. It looks absolutely miserable.
SPEAKER_02:So uh uh Michael in the chat said uh it was invented in Scandinavia.
SPEAKER_00:Oh.
SPEAKER_02:Just had to by Athel.
SPEAKER_00:I had to do a real quick real time correction for you here. Well, in that your chat is keeping us honest, but it is just like these sports are the most wild things to watch. And the fact that like you don't see, like I swear I don't see any highlights from this. Like, this is like the most highlightable thing to be like, whatever this dude is, he went down and like hit five for five, three in a row while skiing downhill.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's uh I mean, I mean, like I it's so popular right now that I know about it, which that that tells you something. Absolutely. But they've been like I they've been doing this for a long time. I just can't believe that we didn't like highlight this before because it is such a cool thing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's so interesting. So it's been a lot of fun. Give it a watch, look up those highlights of Mass Start by Athlon, and you will be like, what in the world did I just watch? It's crazy.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, that was my random segment for the day. You're welcome.
SPEAKER_02:I love it. Thank you for bringing us random sports facts. You're welcome. You know, I know our audience doesn't like Discord or video games, but maybe sports are it, you know?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, maybe that's how we get her in.
SPEAKER_02:That's that's how we really get her in on YouTube now.
SPEAKER_00:Listen, we're gonna have a long time to train you up on sports.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. I heard there was this like superb owl that happened recently. I don't know what that's about, but a quite superb owl.
SPEAKER_00:A very superb, a lot of watchers.
SPEAKER_02:A lot of watchers on that superb owl.
SPEAKER_00:I hope people don't catch that.
SPEAKER_02:I oh I I think they will. I think they will. Well, Michael.
SPEAKER_00:It's weird to hear you say my real name.
SPEAKER_02:It sure is. I I have literally censored myself for five years.
SPEAKER_00:Like, I keep on like catching myself when I'm like Anthony, and I'm like, oh, I just want to say Bruce. I'm sorry for all of our listeners who are like, hey, this is gonna be weird.
SPEAKER_02:Who are these weird as? What's our topic for today? Because I got one.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah, I do have something to talk about.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Uh we hinted at it actually in our last episode. Oh, yeah. You ready for me? Okay, I gotta get some. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I gotta get some everyone. We have props. I am so thrilled. And for those who are listening to the audio only, let me give you a live description. Michael has left his chair, he's walked away, and he is now rummaging through a backpack that I didn't actually see him bring into my house. So now I'm wondering, how did this backpack get here? And he's now taken a giant stack of papers in a red folder that is too small for the amount of papers that are in it, and slammed it on the desk, which I'm sure was a great sound for all of our audio listeners. And that is your live description for the visuals happening on stream right now.
SPEAKER_00:So this is what we're talking about. It's a giant documentation. This is not in English. This is Japanese. Japanese, yes, okay. But this is the topic for today. Documentation. Sorry, I keep on smacking it.
SPEAKER_02:It might sound good or bad, depending on uh your audio preference.
SPEAKER_00:So I prefaced this in the last episode. I said, before I left Universal, two of my employees came in and they said, Hey, we want to talk about documentation. What's the right amount? Is it necessary? Why is it necessary? What's the life cycle to making sure you know documentation is good and it's kept up to date? And this is what I brought basically to say, this is this could be your product documentation. Be like, well, how does a product work? It's like, here you go. I gotta stop. Because every time I see the thing, just yeah, yeah. Um, but this this could be. Imagine if you got this as your product documentation.
SPEAKER_02:Is this actually product documentation?
SPEAKER_00:No, it's not. Well, actually, technically it is. So I think these are all the manuals to like our home stuff, like our fridge, our range, our grill. Like we just kept them all just in case we ever like sell them.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, okay. Well interesting. I I like this because you know, as someone who works for a startup, I work in marketing at the startup. I actually have to work on product documentation occasionally. Just to, you know, as I go through, I read it, I make sure like they're writing things, it's aligned with our our messaging. And for the most part, I let them be occasionally. I'll I'll go fix a thing, but it is probably this thickness, which I would say is you know, six, seven inches thick. Yeah. Of of docs, but in in web form.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. It's as we were talking, you know, really got me thinking about in certain areas, certain professions, like documentation is everything. Like as you think about like medical, you think about something that's like structural engineering or like you know, even chemical, it's like certain things like physics don't change. So having manuals, having technology. Says you maybe they do in some dimensions.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, Einstein.
SPEAKER_00:But those things, it's like you have documentation because you have to be precise. Where we work in software and hardware, like everything's changing all the time.
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:And it really got me thinking about you know, when you work in those industries, or even when you think about like onboarding employees or having something for your company, like what is the right best practices to use, depending on the context? Because in a lot of ways, like, and I've done this in my career, you've done the same. I know you have. Yeah, you create this awesome documentation, you spend hours, weeks on Confluence, like creating something that's amazing. Come to find out, nobody uses it, even though it's incredibly useful. And I think that is the balance that my employees were talking about. They were like, Well, you know, one of them was saying documentation is super important. Like, imagine if you're trying to figure out how a product works and you have something that can just guide you to get there. And the other person on the other side of the argument was saying, Well, software's always changing. Like, and no one's actually going, like, it should be self-intuitive, it should be self-defining. I shouldn't have to go rummage through your documentation to figure out how to use the product. And to be honest, I think both sides are true.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Well, it's this is such an interesting topic. And I'm actually gonna throw it because we can do this now. I'm gonna throw it to our live viewers. I know we have uh our marine engineer in the chat, and I know he mentioned when he was on that he had to read some documentation to get ready for his job.
SPEAKER_00:And lack of documentation. And we don't have a manual.
SPEAKER_02:If you have any personal stories, post them in the chat. I want to read them. Uh, what I'm gonna say is you brought up confluence. Yep. Which is funny. I love confluence. Same. I love it. And one of the features I love that they've added is analytics and statistics. Because I do create a lot of documentation, especially when it comes to messaging, um, any kind of like technical marketing, any kind of informational overview that I might be privy to or my team might be privy to, but other people aren't.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_02:I will go look at those pages in our confluence and see like this is doing really well.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So I know we need more of this kind of content, where this over here, not doing so great. Right. And having that analytics and statistics at my hands has just changed the way I look at documentation, at least internally.
SPEAKER_00:It's data driven. Yes. You're basically like, okay, put something out there, try it. Is it working? Is it not? Is it getting use? And then you can determine like I'm going to continue doing this or I'm not. Exactly. I love that. Yeah. I think that's that's the right approach because I think there's two schools of thought. You create something, a process. You you have to onboard people, you have to bring people onto your team, you have to explain the product you use or how you work within your team. And I think there's two schools of thought. I'm actually curious which one which side you lean on. Do you proactively create documentation, or do you do more just in time when the need arises? That's when you do the documentation. I hope we're opposite in this.
SPEAKER_02:Ooh. Well, interestingly, I do both.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:So I when I started, and even at my my last job, it was mostly just in time. Because just at the release rate of things and product, and usually like the development team or the product team, they're so busy focused on product that I can't get time with them.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Uh, but if I can, if I get hands-on or if I get early access to it and I can go off and create the documentation myself, I'm gonna do it earlier so I have the skeleton ready and then go swap things out when I can.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. I like that.
SPEAKER_02:And I'll I'll use an example. So because my company sells a physical appliance, I create the placemats that come in all the boxes, which is the actual setup instructions. And, you know, I started out building this sort of like standard template. And as we've added more boxes into our infrastructure, we added more uh types of hardware and like ways that you set it up as it's differentiated. It made it really easy for me to either duplicate or update because it was created and I had that skeleton in place that I could then go edit, update, and then publish.
SPEAKER_00:I like that. I think for for hardware and things like that, it's a little bit easier because it's not changing. Like after you make mechanic after you make like hardware decisions and you're like, it's going to be this size, it's at the warehouse, like it's not changing. So I think in that case, like it makes sense and it's a lot easier because it's not like you just wasted a bunch of time and had the wrong specs.
SPEAKER_02:I would actually agree. I would say uh having done both, hardware vastly preferable for documentation than software.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. I think in the school of thought of I'm gonna be proactive, which sounds great, right? Proactive is always usually the right thing to do. I think the the downside to it is it can lead to a lot of waste, especially in software. You know, as I think about software and how dynamically it changes, like you could be in beta, and the software and product teams could be making actual changes to the product. And if you're the marketer, if you're the person putting together the product documentation, that can lead to you just wasting your time because something they heard in that beta period now changed the functionality of something else, and everything you just did now just goes in the trash.
SPEAKER_02:Something you made me think about just now that I haven't thought about in 10 years, and thank God, is branches, right? So when you're when you're and just uh a quick primer for those that don't know, when you're developing a product, usually you have your trunk, it's a tree, right? There's your trunk, which is sort of your main line code base, but team A maybe working on a branch of that code base, specifically doing some kind of security feature. Team B is doing some update to the first-time user experience. And team C is over here optimizing the page refresh rate. So, like one's doing front-end, one's doing back end, one's doing like security, kind of a combination of both. You, the documenter or the marketer or the product manager, might only know about one of these branches. And as these branches fold back into the trunk, you get a nice little surprise when everything breaks or when there's something that you didn't account for that's undocumented. And it is an absolute nightmare. Right.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think that's that's kind of where my head went of like with the dynamicness of usual software products or user facing, whether it's business facing, whatever it is, and the fact that you have a release coming up, it's like we are we have promised these things to our customers or potential customers, and usually you're gonna have multiple teams working on the thing. And there it's really hard to kind of wrangle with a dynamic product like that as you're taking in customer feedback, a documentation system that actually can work in that environment. Like I've seen it fail over and over again. I have failed at doing it of being like, I'm gonna document this thing, and then realize like it's out of date the second I wasted all that time. And I'm like, why did I even bother? Like, what was the point of this? And it really kind of is disheartening because you're like, why document anything ever again? Because it's just gonna be a waste of time and effort. And so I'm I'm more of like adjusting time. Yeah. Or as the need arises, documenter. So, like when you're onboarding someone, I usually find the first person to your team will help you define what's needed because they're gonna start asking a lot of questions, or you're gonna realize I'm telling Anthony how to do his job. We should probably write this down because that's what he's gonna have to do. And I think in this day and age, what's even better, at least for me, in terms of written documentation, is video documentation.
SPEAKER_02:Interesting.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, like actually taking, hey, Anthony, let's do this together, let's screen record and let's put that on Confluence to tell someone how to do this part because we're doing it live. And now, you know, you can even use AI, you can use transcription, whatever it is, to say, now take that and actually make it documentation.
SPEAKER_02:Two of my teammates are the masters at this. Yeah, and I am a little jealous because I I've literally they they'll go off and learn something, and then they will message me and be like, they'll they'll send me like a video.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Like a loom or something like that.
SPEAKER_02:In the corner, there is my teammate, and then on the screen is the product, and they're like clicking through, talking about some new thing that's it's coming out. And I'm like, you gotta just post this in the the general Slack. Like, this is good info, right? You know, and I do think in the modern operating business world, that's the way. Yeah, like truly that is the way. But I will throw out a big butt in the cannot lie. Because of how important search is, and because not everyone's hooked in with AI and search functionality, you do still need written documentation somewhere. And it does need to be available at the launch of your product. Yeah. Because one, AI is gonna search for it.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_02:Right? This is something that a lot of people aren't thinking about today is documentation is parsed by AI. And I'm I'm learning this the hard way. It's like you need to make your documentation AI friendly because if it's not and it misunderstands, it's gonna tell lies. Yeah, so good written documentation is still important. I would say video is absolutely the thing you want to put your quality, time, and effort into because most of your users are going to engage with that first because it's easier, it's more personable, there's an audio component, there's a visual component, it just flows nicely. But also there are the old schoolers too. It's not just the AIs. There are people who are like, I'm gonna control F, and if I can't find this one function that I'm seeing on my screen that I can't figure out how to make work in your docs, your docs suck.
SPEAKER_00:Yep, 100%. Yeah, I think everyone's probably seen it, and I I do think that's like a new age of technology where it's like AI is consuming the internet and looking for patterns.
SPEAKER_02:It's telling people how to do your product.
SPEAKER_00:Every software product out there has it, like an AI or LLMs.txt on the website because it's telling people here is my API documentation. So when you're advising someone how to use this API, this is what you need to do. Here's the parameters, here's what you can expect from return statements, here's the object that comes back. Like those things are so critical to AI working well. It's it's also cool if you use like an AI co-pilot, if you do it with coding or anything. All it does is read your files over and over again to understand the cat the text. It's literally like doing a grep every single time to be like grep this file, cat this file, grep this file. And it's like, okay, now I understand. Let's like I'm gonna move on to the next thing. And so I do think in this day and age, you have to be able to bring those things, especially that are customer-facing or need to be AI friendly, right, to a place that it can be consumable by AI. There's actually now instead of search engine optimization, it's turning into a gentic engine optimization.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, AEO.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's the new biggest thing because that's how AI is going to operate, and the consumer behavior is changing.
SPEAKER_02:When uh someone at my company trained me on AEO, really, it was it was last year.
SPEAKER_00:Did they document that training?
SPEAKER_02:They did that. They I oh did they document? Of course. They had like a whole presentation, and it was it was so powerful when I saw it. I said, I need you to redo this entire presentation, like for my entire team. I need them to see this and I need them to understand that like this is the new world order, everything is broken, we're all gonna die, and this is the new master we must serve. Because like it impacted me. If you like, I'm not kidding. If if this is the first time you've heard about AEO, I don't have a YouTube channel to recommend you go watch, but go look this thing up. It will improve your business output so much because 60% of all organic search traffic now is AI led.
SPEAKER_00:Yep.
SPEAKER_02:And I hate AI. Like, this is not a secret. I hate it, I wish it would die, I wish I'd never have to hear about it, think about it, deal with it ever again. But it's the future we live in. And the second you understand AEO and stop thinking about SEO, search engine optimization, you're thinking about agentic engine optimization, your life will change and your output will improve. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You'll change your websites, you'll change how things are structured, you'll make sure you have an LLMs, that TXT, like you will basically do all the stuff like it that you used to do with SEO of like set your HREF tags and do all that. You don't need to do that really anymore because the model is moving to AI engines rather than search engines. But going back to that, so I think for like internal trainings and things like that, like video is the way. I'm a very visual learner, but I am not good with textbooks. And like I said before, I'm not academic, but if you hand me a textbook, I'm gonna struggle because I'm like, I'm not reading chapters four through seven to understand how to do this. Just send me a video of how to do it, and I will be able to figure that out way faster. And like I said, you can use AI to transcribe that, to put in your confluence page or whatever. But if I'm just telling Anthony, like this is how you do this, like I can just send him a quick video and then put that up on the Confluence for the training.
SPEAKER_02:I do have a small tangent that I want to go on for a second here. Have you ever met an individual that is like, I don't like, I'm not a visual learner, I'm not an audio learner, I'm not a kinetic learner.
SPEAKER_00:I have to read.
SPEAKER_02:I have to read instructions top to bottom. That's the only way I learn. Have you ever met an individual?
SPEAKER_00:I have never met anyone like that.
SPEAKER_02:Do these people exist? I need to know. Because I feel like my entire life, I'm like, yeah, I'm an audio learner. I really like to hear it. That's that's what it teaches me, is if I can hear it, then I'm like, I learned it. But I've never met one of these epic, yeah, rare individuals. It's like, I want to read the instructions top to bottom, including copyright.
SPEAKER_00:There's people that like learn in theory. What was it, like kinetic? Yeah, theoretical. Kinetics of the hands. Yeah, and then there was like theoretical or conceptual learning. And like those are the concepts you kind of learn abstractly, where it's like all textbooks, like read these three chapters, understand the theory, and then we'll put it into practice. And I get that type of learning, but I do agree with you. It's like visual and kinetic learning. And audio in audio, you can actually see things happening and you can understand it in action way better.
SPEAKER_02:I I just I yeah, I cannot imagine.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, dude being like, Do you have a written version of this?
SPEAKER_02:The dude who's like, you know, I would I would love to listen to corporate strategy if you typed up a complete transcript and I was able to read that.
SPEAKER_00:AI would love that.
SPEAKER_02:That's true.
SPEAKER_00:Funny enough.
SPEAKER_02:AI is that dude.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, that's true. AI is the only thing that needs that anymore.
SPEAKER_02:Interesting.
SPEAKER_00:So when we think about like just in time, I think that is the right way to do it for dynamic environments. You know, record yourself, document it when the need arises rather than over-preparing. Like if you are about to launch something that also is consumer-facing or people are paying for, you do need to have that. Like in a lot of big products that we worked on, you would write an instruction manual or guidebook, right? Because that's part of the product. And so I do think there's a place for that for things that are more static. But let's talk about the the life cycle of documentation in a changing environment. Like, how do you know when to go and update it? Like, what's the cycle where you're like, okay, this thing, I had to go back and update it. The hardest thing for me is like when I see people put all this time and effort into something, it's like, well, we're gonna we vastly change that. Now we gotta go back and like update your documentation. And it just becomes more work just to keep the documentation up rather than you know, just having it at all.
SPEAKER_02:I have tips. At lasting, if you want to sponsor, I'm I'm willing to negotiate. So one of the things that I've learned as a as a confluence nut is labels are important. And if you can put a label on something, and it makes sense, right? Like, you don't just want to put a label that says documentation, that helps nobody, but like, what is it that you're documenting? Like if you're if your product is an alerts mechanism and it alerts for different things inside your organization, then each of those different things should get a label, right? And then when you are documenting those things and you apply the labels correctly, when there is an update to that specific thing that alerts, I like that. You now have a list ready to go, and you can go and update those things very quickly. Now, obviously, there are more platforms than just confluence that can do this, but good upfront organization is key. And I think labels specifically, if you're able to, and you know, we do this as engineers when we program, we create classes and abstracts. But when you document, you kind of want to do the same thing. Like, how do I break this up into smaller organized chunks? Because if it's just one long chronological top to bottom, it's gonna be a mess. It's gonna take forever to update. But if you're doing little bitty pieces, and you can just quickly build a list of those things, you need to. Update, it becomes very easy.
SPEAKER_00:I got devil's advocate for you.
SPEAKER_02:Oh no.
SPEAKER_00:So I'm gonna bring you some of the arguments that the team talked about when we went through this. Well, who maintains what those classes and abstracts are and how do I know what is and what isn't?
SPEAKER_02:I mean, well, that okay, so firstly, now that we are who we are, and I know I might be arguing with your actual teammates, uh, I would hope that that too is documented somewhere. And there's like a responsibility matrix, right? Because if it's internal, I do want to know, hey, if I have a question about this, let's just call it the employee alerts function. I want to know who owns this function, maybe product owner, maybe engineer itself. Because if I have quite like if I'm playing around with it, I'm like, ooh, this is working kind of funky.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_02:I want to be able to slack that person and say, hey, individual on Michael's team, how is this supposed to work? Because I'm writing up some documentation for this. It's gonna be public facing, and I'm gonna make sure that our customers have a smooth experience with this. But if there's no chain of custody and it's just the wild west, you you gotta document your documentation, is what I'm getting at. Like there is documentation section happening here.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I I like what you said there. It's you need to define kind of roles and responsibilities of whose responsibility is it to update what documentation. I think regardless of your role, if you're an engineer, if you're a marketer, if you're a product manager, I think everybody has some sort of documentation that needs to needs to live and breathe. And you should be responsible for updating your piece of that documentation. You know, when you think about like a software development team or an architecture team or whatever, they have domain models that they have to keep up to date as the code and structure changes or the database interaction changes. Like that's how they define hey, this is the swagger for this API because it needs to interact with the database this way. But they have to have some way to visualize that, however, with its YAML or whatever you decide to do.
SPEAKER_02:And so don't be throwing words like YAML around.
SPEAKER_00:Not on this podcast.
SPEAKER_02:Hey, we said grep, we said YAML, we're getting really you're throwing out way too many industry terms here, technical terms.
SPEAKER_00:But I think that's like it's an important thing to understand of saying you as a software engineer, this is your responsibility when it comes to documentation. So the responsibility matrix I think is really important. Who is responsible for the go-to go-to-market um, you know, documentation of what marketing materials we use for that launch? Who's responsible for the quality assurance test documentation for how we test and regress this product or when a new bug comes in? I think as a good corporate individual, you've got to figure out how to support that right culture and then define, if it's not defined, define the structure to say, at this part of the life cycle of work we do, if we're a product manager, say it's in the uh concept and design phase, in that stage, you've got to be like, here's the documentation that we expect out of that phase. So documenting your process, understanding when documentation is needed will help you maintain order. So that way everyone knows, okay, we're going through the concept and design phase. Now we got to go and update that documentation as one of the outputs before we move to the next stage of what we're doing.
SPEAKER_02:I I completely agree. And I would also just throw out there, and this is gonna sound very painful, and I I do want also to make the claim here, this is not just for technical.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, right?
SPEAKER_02:100%. I I believe in this for if you work on a grounds crew, right? Like having good thorough documentation. When I say thorough, I mean the the most amount of information you can attach to this thing, the better, right? Who are my employees? What are the plants they're planting? You know, what what time does the irrigation turn? Like, the more information that you have in your chronicling, like yes, it does seem like it's a lot more to update, but what it actually is is it creates a really nice networked system that makes it very easy to find anything at any time, both internally and externally. So the more deep you can go with your information, and the more you can kind of build up in your documentation database, I think the easier it actually is to manage long term.
SPEAKER_00:It also reduces tribal knowledge.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, it does.
SPEAKER_00:Like I think that is one of the problems, and I I can attest to it when I was at Universal. Like I had eight years of time where I built this tribal knowledge and the documentation was lacking. I can 100% admit I did not document things I probably should have over the years. And I do think a lot of people came to me because they had these questions that could have easily been documented and I could have shared it with somebody.
SPEAKER_02:Anytime someone hits me up for info that is like, wait a second, uh this should be documented.
SPEAKER_00:I love that tip.
SPEAKER_02:I will go and create it. Yeah, yeah. Because it it just helps.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Yeah, multiple people are coming to you for the same thing. You that's a need. Like recognize that people are asking that there's a need and that you can then go fulfill that need to say, hey, I created a confluence page to help with this. I think that's a really good tip.
SPEAKER_02:I want to read some uh from our chat. So uh Michael says, documentation is key when you have to learn a new system, but it's also for keeping track of changes like new spare part uh taking the place of an existing spare part. And then we also have uh EHN saying uh flowchart's immensely important, pictograms, but pure audio, I will tune out. Even now I'm I'm drawing, I can listen to you uh better, but yeah, enjoy well-written text. And then Elmer Elmer Futterino says, I think a proper archiving system is essential.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, 100% agree. Yeah, having some historical things around it. I think is like in the pre-AI stage, it was critical, but not that critical. Like you could get there without it. In the AI stage, where every company now has an internal LLM that's trained on the company data and you can just search for it, it's even more important now because AI is only good as good as the data in. And so if you don't have any data, AI can't help you because it has no context, no knowledge, it has no idea how anything works. So documentation will prepare you for having a better experience using AI as well.
SPEAKER_02:I think it also just as a higher level sort of corporate strategy view when you use a platform like Monday, Confluence, whatever, and you're you're encouraging your employees to go and create documentation instead of having tribal knowledge to share broadly, morale goes up.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Like workplace frustration goes down because if I know I can find it there, right, then I'm not going and slacking Clark and saying, hey Clark, I have no idea how this works. How do I make this work?
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_02:Right? And like you're not getting bothered. Well, you're not Clark anymore. Clark's not getting bothered, and I'm not getting bothered because I can go get the information I need. It's a reliable place to go. Like it lowers the temperature of frustration, right? It increases productivity, and I feel like overall it just removes that sort of morale barrier where I don't feel like I can be successful because I don't know what I need to know to be successful.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And then even if you're like someone new in the company, it's kind of it kind of sucks to be in a position of like asking everybody for help every time you need something or have a question. And I've been at companies like that where it's like no one has written anything down, and you literally just have to go and ask around and like be like, hey, how does this thing work? What do I do here? And you kind of feel annoying because you're like, I'm always asking for everything. And then eventually once you figure it out, the worst thing you can do is contribute to that and not go back and help people who are starting now. Like you should go back and say, I'm gonna help the next person and this company by starting to document everything I went through. I actually um at Universal, I had somebody come from another team into our team just to kind of intern and understand what we did. And the thing we had them do was update our onboarding documentation to our team because we're like, hey, you're going through this. Everything you need that pops up, we want you to write it down and we will help put all the content around it. But we need your help identifying like what are the things you actually need because we are so far separated from that that we don't even know. We have blind spots in like what we need.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Well, you know, it's it's so interesting because I I do think the better corporations, the better, sorry, the better teams I've been on have been the more documented ones. Yeah, you know, it's just like I it's for me, it's a hundred percent of the time.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_02:The documentation's been good, teams better.
SPEAKER_00:I got I got a bunch of devil's advocates for you, ready? Try to defend yourself. Why do you keep doing this to me? You said you're a fan of documentation, so this is perfect. Okay, all right. But documentation, Anthony, takes too much time. It's gonna eat up hours of my day in order to do this.
SPEAKER_02:Easy mode. Michael, drop a hard one on me next time. Documentation, the more time you put into it, the less time you spend looking for it, working around it, and the less time our customers spend frustrated on support line.
SPEAKER_00:I like that good answer. That was really good. But Anthony, I got another question. As an engineer, shouldn't my code document itself? Why do I need to document my code?
SPEAKER_02:If your code documents itself, Michael, then you are clearly in the wrong job because I didn't hire you to write self-documenting code. I hired you to build uh a solution that our customers want that they should be able to understand easily, but if they need information, can go get.
SPEAKER_00:So I think this one from like an engineering perspective, I actually agree with in a number of ways. Having like a comment above like a function to explain what it does, and then like having to be inside the function explaining what each line does, if you find yourself doing that, you have done wrong. Because code should be self-explanatory if someone actually is reading the code for the most part. I would say you can make like you can do something that could take 20 lines in one line. Now the question is, should you do that? And the answer is usually no, because it's some weird abstraction where you're doing all these things in one line, and someone reads that and they're like, what in the world does this code do? When you could easily do it in five lines, and it would be much more understandable.
SPEAKER_02:Deadvil's advocate, Michael. This code was really great and easy to read, self-documented five years ago, but we've all moved on to whatever the new flavor of the year is code base. And all of our new hires have no idea what this nonsense you wrote in C minus minus is. And now what yeah, it made sense to the experts like you back in the day. Yeah, but had you just added a few comments to say, this is what this does, your your co your you know, your future uh teammates five years from now would be like, geez, that Michael, so full of himself, thinks everyone's a master at C minus minus.
SPEAKER_00:Now that is, it's it is interesting because I do think that happens frequently. And again, it goes back to the software and documentation problem. Because usually, as languages get more versions, program languages, you know, get an additional version, sometimes they simplify things, sometimes they add new abstractions. And what used to take 10 lines now takes two lines. And people now coming into the industry or now learning the language, they don't know the old stuff. That's right. And so it is a common problem where it's like, okay, well, is this now our time to refactor? Or do you just kind of live with this text that of like it's this old thing? You got to call Gary if you want to update it. And I mean, we lived that 100% every day.
SPEAKER_02:And an actual guy named Gary, who, you know, was the keeper of knowledge for many things. Gary was the man. Gary was the man, but you know what? There's no way in a million years I'd ever know what Gary knows because Gary had been there for 20 years and we had been there for five. Yeah. So, you know, it's just I I do think even with really elegant self-documented code, you can't be thinking about the next year. You have to be thinking about the next five.
SPEAKER_00:100%. Yeah, so I think this was like a good, even though we didn't have specific answers to a lot of these questions, I think the answer is really contextual for what are you doing, what department are you in. And I think one of the biggest tips we talked about is I think documentation is part of everyone's job. Yeah, it is. But you need to define what does it mean and where does it fit in the way that we do work. And if your first question is, well, everyone does our work a little differently, you're not gonna be successful with documentation because you guys don't have a standard way of working where you can insert to say documentation is required at this stage of your work, and you're never gonna have that consistency. I think once you get to a level where, and we did this on my product management team before I left, was we defined a product lifecycle of how we do our work, what the stages are, what the inputs to those stages were, what the outputs expected were. And that can now be used in an LLM where we can put that documentation LLM and you can say, okay, I'm on this stage, like what am I supposed to do now? Can you give me a few examples? There's references to those examples. You can use them to create really good product management, you know, whatever it is, PRDs or whatever you're creating. And so I think, you know, your job first, if you have no idea where to start, is first understand how you work and try to standardize how do we work as a team, then figure out at what points do you actually need documentation to provide value. Don't just create documentation to create documentation. And then from there, you can actually create the documentation that is going to be valuable to either the consumer or to your internal customer, a team, whatever.
SPEAKER_02:Uh I've got two additional points to make. Uh, one is Elmer Federinos, who says your customers don't have access to the source code and they don't read your self-documented code.
SPEAKER_00:100%. Great answer.
SPEAKER_02:I would all and and the other thing I'll add is, you know, this has been a very code tech heavy episode, but just to kind of give a more general example, at Big Corp, where we used to work, I just like Big Corp too much to stop using. So much fun to say. So much better than being truthful. At Big Corp, one of the things that many people struggled with was HR documentation. Yeah. Finding what the policies are for, you know, basic things like time off, how do I get promoted? What's my next career step? If you don't have good documentation for the entirety of your corporate strategy, the podcast that could have been an email, then you are missing out, and your internal people are going to suffer for it. And you're what you're gonna do is you're gonna create churn and time, time spent. Because anytime I have to go, okay, who is the HR person I'm gonna reach out to? Okay, send that email. They have to go process my email. Now they have to connect to me. Maybe they set up a meeting because they don't have documentation. So rather than write some long spiel, they have to get on the phone and say, okay, Anthony, here's how the promotion structure works here, here's how you go about getting your like that's time wasted.
SPEAKER_00:You know what it is? It's money. It's dollars.
SPEAKER_02:It's dollars lost to do that. When you when you are anybody in a corporation and you document so other people can see and understand what you're doing, you are creating accountability, you are saving time, and most importantly, you're saving the company money.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And you will look good in the process.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think like I think managers are sometimes scared to allow for this. And I think you have to go in, like if you if you're trying to figure out, well, you know, Anthony and Michael, like, I don't think I can get my manager on board with us doing documentation. I think you bring that exact argument to him to be like, listen, do you like saving money? Do you want us to do more work? Well, Sally, who just onboarded, it took her three months. I bet you we could get that down to like a month and just try to try to explain the benefits to say, I'm not saying that we have to go in and do three months of documentation. What I'm advocating for is that we spend 10% of our time every release doing the documentation for whatever my role is. I'm gonna create the go-to-market before we actually publish the white paper, whatever, whatever you do. I'm going to write the documentation, I'm gonna post on Confluence, and we're gonna commit to that as a team. If you work in Agile, this is a perfect spot for retrospective to say, hey, I've been thinking about documentation and how we're not great at it. Why don't we work on a way that we can insert it in the way we work? So that way when every story is complete, we make sure we write documentation around it or whatever it is. And I think that's the way that you can make it tangible for a manager to get on board.
SPEAKER_02:One one more thing I'll add is we just gotta keep adding one more thing. If you work in an office, or if you are someone who goes to customer-facing events, or if you're in sales, ask questions to your customers, your support representatives, your co-workers, and say, like, hey, how was your experience with this thing? And you may identify gaps in your documentation that don't exist and save everyone time by bringing that up and finding the right key stakeholder to go and build that documentation.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I actually one I'm gonna do one last thing, your one last thing, and then I just keep on going and maybe never end this podcast. My one last thing is a great way to know if your documentation is useful is to make sure you have someone test it. Yeah, it's true. Have someone go try it. That's a really good point. And if it doesn't work, say, okay, why didn't it work? Treat it like a product where you're like, hey, here I created this onboarding documentation, Sally, we just brought you on board. Like, what was useful, what wasn't? Did you use that at all? She's like, Yeah, I tried that thing, but it sent me to this other system that didn't have access to. It's like, great. Can you go and say how to get access to that thing and put that as a step before this one and make it, you know, part of that feedback loop so that way your documentation is always up to date, but always useful as well.
SPEAKER_02:I love that. That's a great one last thing. I'm not gonna one last thing that, because I think that's actually a really good one. Test it.
SPEAKER_00:Test it out.
SPEAKER_02:That is really how you see the rubber hit the road and know if your documentation is good. Love that. It's great.
SPEAKER_00:I think we did it.
SPEAKER_02:I think we did it. Documentation. Documentation. I cannot believe we talked about it for over an hour.
SPEAKER_00:How do we keep doing this to ourselves?
SPEAKER_02:Didn't didn't think there was enough meat on that bone, but yet here we are. Uh well, firstly, thank you to uh the folks in our chat who participated in this episode. I love that we get to do this now. So if you're listening to the audio version of this, uh subscribe to our YouTube channel. And I swear eventually we will get better at having an actual schedule when we're gonna be doing these live. Or you can join on Discord, which might not be around much longer. But for the time being, it's another great way to kind of stay in touch with uh us and our schedule and when we'll be live, and you'll get those instant notifications there.
SPEAKER_00:I love it. Yeah, we're a word-of-mouth podcast. We said this last time, but share with your friends. We do actually get to share it on social media now, which is nice. So I can't wait. I'm gonna send a direct message to my team. Maybe they're listening, being like, hey, we shared some helpful tips, would love to get your feedback. And so do that to other people that are talking about documentation and be like, hey, here's a really good podcast that gives some tips around documentation, and maybe we can figure out how to solve it together.
SPEAKER_02:I love that. You know what? If I ever touch social media, I'll do the same thing.
SPEAKER_00:Please post on LinkedIn.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I haven't touched LinkedIn. I I legit hadn't touched LinkedIn in two years.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. I am an avid LinkedIn.
SPEAKER_02:I think it was one of your AI posts. I I read it and I was like, I am done with this platform forever. And I logged out and didn't log back in for two years. And then uh I did log back in recently when you know you know stuff was stuff was happening to my company just so I could have my all my stuff up to date. But uh your post was great, by the way. Thank you. Loved your post. I really should do something.
SPEAKER_00:Should.
SPEAKER_02:I should.
SPEAKER_00:I'll just keep on sharing every week and then maybe you'll repost it.
SPEAKER_02:I did repost it. That's something. I did do the bare minimum. Maybe you're our social media guy.
SPEAKER_00:I hate that. I think you're a lot more likable than I am. I don't use any other social media posting-wise than LinkedIn. That's it. That's great. That's where that's where the corporate strategists are. That's true. It's the best place. That is the best place. Well, this is a lot of fun to do this live. You know, we're gonna keep it up. We might do some more remote ones, but yeah, we'll figure it out eventually.
SPEAKER_02:We'll figure it out. And and we will have a schedule uh built eventually so you can tune in live or or catch the uploads after we do them. And I think that does it. I think so. Unless you've got anything else. That's it. 201. All right, 201. 201 episodes. Okay. Uh just it just it doesn't it doesn't sit well with me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:It doesn't sit well. It's been a long time. We've been doing this a long time. Like 200 episodes is a lot. 201 is like that the journey continues.
SPEAKER_00:Now, right? And now you just have no end in sight. 200, we we knew where we were gonna pivot or persevere, like kill this thing or keep it going. Yeah. Now there's no end.
SPEAKER_02:We had a serious conversation. I was like, do you want to keep doing this? Like, do you want to just stop? Do you want to hang up a towel and you know?
SPEAKER_00:And I said never.
SPEAKER_02:He did say never. I was like, dang it. There went my exit. Uh geez. I mean, like saying 201 just makes me think like we're gonna be sitting here at 230, and I'm gonna be looking down the barrel of the camera and be like, I'm never getting out of here.
SPEAKER_00:I can't wait till we're like 91. I'm in podcast jail. This is Corporate Strategy episode 3976.
SPEAKER_02:It's not we're not even gonna be working. Like, it's it's gonna be completely irrelevant for everybody we're gonna be talking. We're gonna be like those boomers talking about like, oh, back in 1950 before fact machines. I remember what an email was. When they introduced email, it really ruined everything. Like, I we're gonna be like that on this show, and it's not gonna be valuable for anybody, but like our whatever the boomer equivalent base is that's stuck with us, it's gonna be like, yeah, I hate kids these days.
SPEAKER_00:I can't wait till everyone here is joining us on that journey and also listening in and be like, wow, remember episode 201 when they said this would happen?
SPEAKER_02:It's gonna it's gonna be a bunch of like AARP facts. And you know, like, uh oh, now that you're retired from corporate, and you know, no one's actually gonna retire considering the way things are going, but you know, now that you're almost in the cusp of retirement at 90 years old, here's some tips to exit the workplace gracefully.
SPEAKER_00:Remember Social Security?
SPEAKER_02:Well, that was a lot. We funded that for a long time, didn't we? Oh, here's to 3,000 more episodes. Here's to it. Let's get them. All right. Well, I think that wraps it up for another episode of Corporate Strategy, the podcast that could have been an email. Uh, if you'd like to support the show, you can do so by clicking on the link in the uh either the video or the show, and take a look at our link tree, go to our Patreon, sign up, and support us. This is completely funded by us and soon to be funded by you. We are very close to hitting the no longer needs to be funded purely by me.
SPEAKER_01:Let's go threshold.
SPEAKER_02:Let's go. So if you want to help the show, you can do that by joining our Patreon and you get some special perks by doing that. Uh, you can join our Discord, and you can also check out our website, our merch shop, uh, or many other things. There's a lot going to be happening in the future for corporate strategy, so we're excited to bring you on this journey with us. But until then, I'm Anthony.
SPEAKER_00:And I'm Michael.
SPEAKER_02:And you're on mute. But you can see us. I see, I don't think I don't think the outro works anywhere.
SPEAKER_00:The outro might have to be reversed.
SPEAKER_02:I'm assigning this this Jira ticket is going to you. Come up with a new outro, because I can't. I'm done. I'm I'm retiring. We will see you all next week. Do I click stop streaming or in broadcast?
