 Matt, the CEO of WordPress.com, called it their biggest organizational asset. Now in your head you might be answering that must be the people or it must be the money in the bank or it must be their source code, but that was not his answer. His answer? Their internal micro blog. In essence, this contains all the combined knowledge of all the people that ever worked for WordPress.com. This second brain for organizations is also the hidden superpower of DevOps platform GitLab and of telecom provider Voice. In this video we'll dive into why you would want a second brain for your company, what the four main pitfalls are, and how you can become successful in the usage of such a second brain. So why would you want this? Well, what happens usually when you have a question in the organization? You ask a colleague and that's a great way for a fast response, but it also has some major drawbacks. The first one is that it's one-on-one knowledge transfer and not one too many. The second one is that information gets stuck in people's heads and those heads aren't going to be available all the time so it's very difficult to maintain that information. The third one is that you interrupt somebody in a world that's set up for interruptions and it will take more than 50 minutes for them to get back into their flow. A solution might be found in knowledge bases but if we look at how organizations use these we see that they're often old, out of date, contain old information and aren't actively used or maintained. But there's one massive internet success story where we can learn from. Let's take some lessons from the biggest online knowledge base Wikipedia. The first one is that it's open to all. Everybody can read it, edit it or add information to the system. The second lesson we can learn is that you can do that without a login. There's no barrier to entry. And the third lesson we can learn is that it's linked information. Diving deeper into a subject is very very easy. So if these very basic principles work on the open web we must be able to implement them in organizations as well. Now there are loads of tools that can help you out with capturing this but if you select the tool these are the four elements you have to look for. The first one is that information should be opened by default. Having access to the same information doesn't only bring alignment, it also helps people make autonomous decisions. Number two, everything should be changeable by everybody in the organization by default. This makes information complete and up to date. Number three, document the optimal way not the only way. You have to look at the information that is being captured as a best practice but not as an only practice. You have to be able to divert from the default path to try something new if the situation asks for it. And number four, let people make mistakes. It's okay if information gets deleted, it's okay that information gets altered and it isn't altered in the right way. You can always revert back. It's more important that the system is being used than people making mistakes from time to time in such a system. So we have been experimenting with multiple tools over the past 15 years but two years ago we finally found something that truly fits us. It's very easy to use, it's open by default and this open for everybody to use. It's very strong in linking information, having multiple types of linking and it's very easy to let content live on multiple pages without having to duplicate the content. The tool we found is called Notion. Now I've got two more bonus tips for you but before I share these I would really like your help. There's a lot more we can say about building a second brain and using Notion at scale. We will go deeper into how we do that, how we structure information, how we manage information but also the theory behind it. If you want to see this in the future you can subscribe to the channel. But more than that I would love to know how you structure second brain for either your organization or for yourself so I would love to hear that in the comments. What can also help you is our three-part blog series about this topic and you can find links to that in the video description. Now for the bonus tips and the first one might be the most important one. You have to create a company culture that embraces knowledge management. Our knowledge base is called the Oracle and I often hear people in the organization say oh don't ask me you can find that in the Oracle and they often put an extra comment to it saying and if it's not in there put it in there. Now it's not that colleagues aren't willing to help. We often send each other links to the Oracle but it's more that we want people to be self-reliant in finding information. It helps with the autonomy and mastery we feel everybody in the organization should have and with these remarks documentation becomes a habit for the organization. The second tip is on when to start building this second brain. We started straight when we started voice. I documented everything that was difficult and I didn't do that frequently so I wouldn't skip any steps or have to reinvent the wheel every time I wanted to do something. This really helped new colleagues pick up tasks quickly because they were documented or take over tasks they wanted to do for the organization. So today might actually be the best day to start this. The compounding effect of creating this together is fantastic and for you it might lead to an Oracle that also becomes your biggest organizational asset. Thanks for taking the time to watch this video. If you want to learn more about getting the most out of yourself or your organization I can recommend the rest of the channel and I would love to see you in the next one. Cheers!