Rule 5 - Everything is connected
About the way we communicate and find information, both inside and outside the organization
Summary - We communicate through stories that have a URL. Everything needs a URL. We work in a Virtual Office with ‘single sources of truth’, of which the external website trumps the Virtual Office if not stated otherwise.
Access to information has more value than storing it. Especially for two types of information that people in an organization generally need most: what and who. Make sure that this information is but 1 click away from your startup screen (as is with Google), and focus on making information easy to access. You can trust your employees to provide the information and fill in the gaps for you. When you have your own internal Google, and you combine this with your own ‘Wikipedia’, employees will automatically start writing down how they perform projects. This self-organizing behavior ensures best practices are easily picked up by all parts of your organization.
All information will have an URL, accessible to all employees and clients. It includes putting documents, PDFs, knowledge, lessons learned, minutes of meeting, actions, everything online. This is exactly what Wikipedia has done; the largest open-source encyclopedia the world has ever produced. Consider what this would mean for your company or organization if you would consider all information the same way as Wikipedia has done. And if you can find it swiftly. It is also a reason why you should do virtually everything open-source (as far as is permissible).
Focus on access to information, not storing knowledge.
The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor (Source: the Righteous Mind).
Single-source of truth and digital native solutions only. It is better to storytell like TED, than to have a powerpoint. Use a digital native solution on a URL (blog/vlog/podcast). Inspiration is Amazon, who only use memos. This helps your crew to develop their storytell skills and makes sharing ideas orders of magnitudes easier.
Things have # (what: topics and projects), people have @ (who: people and groups). People also have # to easily find who can help you with a problem.
Internal/External need to be connected (preferably the same as much as possible). Options: Slack, Microsoft Teams.
No internal emails. Even cans connected to strings are preferred over email.
Examples of companies and organizations that understand are Google and Wikipedia (we should adhere to similar information searching and storing mechanisms.