The Complete Guide to Building a Documentation Culture

I'll never forget the day Sarah left.

She was our senior operations manager at Simpo. Knew every process, every client quirk, every workaround we'd developed over three years. Everyone depended on her.

Two weeks after she left, our warehouse manager messaged me: "How do we handle rush orders for international clients? Sarah always knew, but I can't find it anywhere."

I sat there staring at my screen thinking, we're completely screwed.

Three years of operational knowledge. Gone. Because we hadn't built a documentation culture. We had a "keep it in Sarah's head and hope she never leaves" culture.

And she'd left.

I'm Yuval Karmi, founder and CEO of Glitter AI. That painful experience sent me down a path of obsessively building documentation culture across two startups. Not the kind where you create a wiki nobody uses, but the kind where documenting knowledge becomes as natural as checking email.

This guide is everything I've learned about building documentation culture that actually works. Whether you're starting from scratch or trying to fix a broken system, I'll show you exactly how to make documentation part of how your team works.

Documentation culture is a shared team mindset where creating, maintaining, and using documentation is valued, expected, and woven into how everyone works.

It's not about having perfect docs. It's about having a team where someone's first instinct when they learn something is to write it down so others don't have to figure it out again.

Here's what documentation culture looks like in practice:

When an engineer solves a tricky bug, they immediately document the solution. When a customer success rep handles a complex issue, they add it to the knowledge base. When a process changes, the documentation gets updated before the change goes live.

Documentation happens continuously, not in occasional bursts of motivation.

Why Most Teams Fail at Building Documentation Culture

I've seen countless teams try and fail to build documentation culture. They all make the same mistakes.

They treat documentation as an afterthought. Something you do "when you have time," which is never. Documentation gets pushed to the bottom of the priority list until a crisis forces it to the top.

They create elaborate systems. Teams spend weeks building the perfect documentation framework with complex taxonomies, approval workflows, and style guides. The system becomes so complicated that nobody uses it.

They hire a "documentation person." Instead of making documentation everyone's responsibility, they create a bottleneck. The doc person becomes overwhelmed, and everyone else stops documenting because "that's not my job."

They expect perfection. Teams wait for documentation to be comprehensive and perfectly formatted before publishing. Good enough documentation that exists is infinitely better than perfect documentation that doesn't.

Real documentation culture means documentation happens while you work, not as extra work after the fact.

The Real Cost of No Documentation Culture

According to research by Panopto, employees spend an average of 5.3 hours per week waiting for information from colleagues or searching for knowledge that should be documented. That's over 13% of a full work week wasted.

For a team of 10 people, that's over 2,000 hours per year. The equivalent of one full-time employee just lost to poor documentation.

But the real costs go deeper:

Knowledge walks out the door. Every time someone leaves, critical expertise disappears unless you've systematically captured it. I've watched companies lose years of accumulated knowledge in weeks.

Teams make the same mistakes repeatedly. Without documented lessons learned, every new project starts from zero. You pay the learning cost over and over instead of building on past experience.

Onboarding takes forever. New employees spend months figuring out what veteran employees know instinctively. Strong documentation culture can cut onboarding time by 60%.

Processes break when people go on vacation. If only one person knows how to handle critical tasks, your operations are fragile. Documentation makes knowledge resilient.

Decision-making slows down. When context and history aren't documented, every decision requires tracking down people who remember. Meetings multiply to transfer knowledge that should be written down.

The Benefits of Strong Documentation Culture

Companies with strong documentation culture see measurable benefits:

Faster onboarding. New hires become productive in weeks instead of months. They can self-serve answers instead of constantly interrupting colleagues. Documentation accelerates learning.

Improved consistency. When processes are documented, everyone executes them the same way. Your customers in New York and Miami get identical experiences. Quality becomes predictable.

Better knowledge sharing. Documentation makes expertise accessible to everyone, not just those who work directly with subject matter experts. Knowledge spreads across teams and departments.

Reduced interruptions. People can find answers in documentation instead of asking the same questions repeatedly. Experts spend less time answering and more time creating value.

Institutional knowledge survives turnover. When employees leave, their knowledge stays. Transitions become smooth instead of catastrophic.

At Glitter AI, after we built strong documentation culture, new team members started making meaningful contributions in their first week instead of their first month. The difference was transformative.

When Documentation Culture is Critical

Not every organization needs the same level of documentation culture, but these situations absolutely demand it:

• High-growth companies scaling teams rapidly and replicating processes
• Remote or distributed teams where you can't just tap someone on the shoulder
• Regulated industries requiring compliance documentation and audit trails
• Complex operations with specialized knowledge concentrated in few people
• Customer-facing teams where consistency directly impacts satisfaction
• Organizations with high turnover constantly onboarding new employees

If losing one person would create operational chaos, you need documentation culture. If new hires ask the same questions every week, you need documentation culture. If teams keep reinventing the wheel, you absolutely need documentation culture.

Key Takeaways

• Documentation culture makes documenting knowledge a natural part of how teams work
• Organizations lose $31.5 billion annually due to poor documentation and knowledge exchange
• Strong documentation culture reduces onboarding time, prevents knowledge loss, and improves consistency
• Documentation should happen continuously while working, not as separate tasks
• The cost of not having documentation culture compounds over time

How do you know if your documentation culture needs work? These warning signs tend to appear before full-blown crises hit.

Warning Sign 1: The Same Questions Get Asked Repeatedly

You're in a meeting. Someone asks, "How do we handle refunds for enterprise customers?"

Three people start explaining, each with a slightly different answer. Nobody's sure which approach is current. Someone says, "I'll ask Sarah," but Sarah's on vacation.

This is what no documentation culture looks like.

In organizations with strong documentation culture, someone would say, "Let me pull up the refund process doc," and everyone would reference the same source of truth.

If you hear the same questions every week, you don't have a documentation problem. You have a culture problem.

Warning Sign 2: Onboarding Takes Forever

New hires spend their first month in a constant state of confusion. They ask basic questions that veterans answer with "Oh yeah, we have a weird process for that. Let me show you."

They sit through multiple training sessions covering the same topics. They make mistakes because nobody told them about the exceptions. They interrupt busy colleagues constantly.

At Simpo, before we built documentation culture, new employees took six months to become fully productive. After? Six weeks. The only difference was documented knowledge they could access themselves.

If your new hires are struggling, your documentation culture is failing them.

Warning Sign 3: Knowledge is Trapped in Individual Heads

You have "that person" who knows everything about your database. Or inventory system. Or client relationships. When they're unavailable, work stops.

People say things like:

• "Only Marcus knows how to configure that"
• "Wait for Jennifer to get back from vacation"
• "I have no idea. Ask the team in Boston"

This is organizational fragility disguised as expertise. You're one departure away from crisis.

Strong documentation culture means knowledge is accessible to everyone who needs it, not locked in individual heads.

Warning Sign 4: Processes Are Inconsistent

Your Denver office handles customer complaints differently than your Atlanta office. One team uses Excel, another uses Google Sheets, a third built a custom tool nobody else knows about.

When processes aren't documented, everyone invents their own approach. Inconsistency becomes the norm. Customer experience varies wildly. Quality becomes unpredictable.

Documentation culture creates shared understanding of "how we do things here."

Warning Sign 5: Documentation Exists But Nobody Uses It

You have a wiki. Or a Confluence. Or a SharePoint. It has hundreds of pages of documentation.

Nobody looks at it.

Why? Because the documentation is outdated, scattered, or impossible to find. People have learned that asking a colleague is faster than searching the knowledge base.

Having documentation doesn't mean you have documentation culture. The documentation needs to be current, organized, and trusted.

Warning Sign 6: Departures Create Chaos

Someone gives two weeks' notice. Panic sets in.

"Who knows how to handle their accounts?" "Where did they keep their files?" "How do they do that thing they do?"

The team scrambles to extract knowledge before the person leaves. They realize too late how much lived only in that person's head.

Strong documentation culture makes departures manageable, not catastrophic.

Warning Sign 7: Meetings Multiply to Share Context

You schedule meetings to bring people up to speed. Those meetings generate action items requiring more meetings to align. Calendar becomes a game of Tetris.

Much of this meeting time is just knowledge transfer: sharing context, explaining decisions, reviewing history. Information that should be documented and accessible.

Documentation culture reduces meeting overhead by making context available on demand.

Warning Sign 8: Teams Reinvent the Wheel

Engineering solves a deployment problem. Six months later, a different team solves the same problem differently. Nobody knows the first solution exists.

Marketing runs a successful campaign. Next quarter, a different marketer tries the same thing from scratch. Lessons learned aren't captured.

Organizations without documentation culture pay the learning cost repeatedly instead of building on past knowledge.

The Documentation Culture Assessment

Ask yourself these questions:

• Can a new hire find answers to common questions without asking colleagues?
• Do processes stay consistent when different people execute them?
• When someone leaves, does their knowledge stay?
• Can people find documentation quickly when they need it?
• Do team members naturally document their work?
• Is documentation kept current and accurate?
• Do people trust the documentation enough to use it?

If you answered "no" to more than two questions, your documentation culture needs work.

Key Takeaways

• Repeated questions signal that knowledge isn't being captured and shared
• Long onboarding times indicate missing or inaccessible documentation
• Knowledge concentrated in individual heads creates organizational fragility
• Existing documentation means nothing if people don't use it or trust it
• Departures shouldn't create chaos if knowledge is properly documented

Documentation culture starts with mindset. You need to fundamentally change how your team thinks about documentation: from burden to asset, from extra work to essential work.

Here's how to build that mindset shift.

Make Documentation Part of the Definition of "Done"

At Glitter AI, we changed our completion criteria. A task isn't done until it's documented.

Ship a new feature? Document how it works. Change a process? Update the docs. Solve a tricky problem? Add it to the knowledge base.

This sounds simple, but it's transformative. Documentation becomes non-optional. It's part of the work, not extra work after the fact.

In project management tools, we literally added "Documentation created/updated" as a checkbox. Pull requests include a documentation checklist. Process changes require doc updates before approval.

When documentation is in the definition of done, it gets done.

Document While You Work, Not After

The biggest mindset shift is timing. Documentation shouldn't be "that thing I'll do later." It should happen simultaneously with the work.

Training someone on a new process? Record the training session. That recording is your documentation.

Solving a customer issue? Document the solution while you're resolving it, not days later when memory has faded.

Making a complex decision? Write the context and rationale as part of the decision-making process.

I screen record myself during important tasks. While I work, I explain what I'm doing and why. That becomes the guide for the next person. It takes zero extra time because I'm working anyway.

Documentation created while working is fresher, more accurate, and more detailed than documentation written from memory later.

Embrace "Good Enough" Documentation

Perfectionism kills documentation culture faster than anything else.

I've watched teams spend weeks crafting the perfect documentation framework. Elaborate style guides. Complex approval workflows. Beautiful formatting standards.

Nobody creates any documentation because the bar is too high.

Good enough documentation that exists is infinitely better than perfect documentation that doesn't.

Here's my rule: documentation needs to get someone 80% of the way there. That last 20%? They can figure it out or ask questions.

A 3-minute screen recording explaining the basics of a process is way more valuable than a perfectly formatted 20-page guide that takes two weeks to write and nobody reads.

Start with rough documentation. You can always refine it later based on actual feedback from real users.

Share Knowledge Liberally

A documentation-first mindset means defaulting to open sharing.

When you learn something useful, share it. When you solve a problem, document it publicly. When you improve a process, tell everyone.

At Glitter AI, we have a Slack channel called #til (Today I Learned) where people share quick insights. Another called #docs-updates where people announce when they've created or updated documentation.

This creates social proof. Documentation becomes visible and valued. People see colleagues sharing knowledge and want to contribute too.

The mindset shift is from "knowledge is power I should hoard" to "sharing knowledge multiplies my impact."

Make Documentation Discoverable and Useful

A documentation-first mindset means thinking about the reader, not just the writer.

When creating documentation, ask:

• Who will use this?
• What are they trying to accomplish?
• What questions will they have?
• How will they find this when they need it?

Use descriptive titles. Add relevant tags. Link related content. Write for humans, not robots.

I've seen documentation that's technically comprehensive but practically useless because it's impossible to find or understand. The mindset shift is from "I documented it" to "people can actually use what I documented."

Celebrate Documentation Wins

What gets recognized gets repeated.

When someone creates valuable documentation, celebrate it publicly. In team meetings. In Slack channels. In performance reviews.

"Sarah's troubleshooting guide just saved us 4 hours of debugging. Everyone should check it out."

"Mike documented the client onboarding process, and it's cut onboarding time in half."

Make heroes out of people who document well. Show that this work matters, is valued, and helps advance careers.

The mindset shift is from "documentation is thankless work" to "documentation is how I multiply my impact and get recognized."

Lead by Example

You cannot delegate documentation culture. If you're a leader, you must visibly document your own work.

When I decided to build documentation culture at Glitter AI, I started by documenting everything I did.

How I run customer calls. How I prioritize feature requests. How I make hiring decisions. How I handle difficult conversations.

I screen recorded myself doing these tasks and shared the recordings. The message was clear: nobody is too senior to document their work.

This had massive effect. If the CEO documents his processes, everyone else feels permission and expectation to do the same.

The mindset shift is from "documentation is for junior people" to "documentation is how professionals work."

Key Takeaways

• Make documentation part of the definition of "done" for all tasks
• Document while working, not as a separate activity afterward
• Accept "good enough" documentation over perfect documentation that never happens
• Share knowledge liberally and make it discoverable to others
• Celebrate documentation wins and lead by example from leadership

Building documentation culture requires buy-in at every level. You need leadership support, team participation, and organizational commitment.

Here's exactly how to get it.

Getting Leadership Buy-In

Leaders care about business outcomes, not documentation theory. Frame documentation culture in terms they care about: revenue, efficiency, risk, and scalability.

Speak their language:

"We're spending $150,000 per year on employee time wasted searching for information. Documentation culture would recapture that."

"When Sarah left, it took three months to recover her knowledge. That cost us two delayed projects and one lost client. Documentation prevents that."

"We can't scale operations if every process lives in people's heads. Documentation enables replication."

Make the business case with numbers. Calculate the cost of:

• Time wasted searching for information
• Repeated mistakes due to lost knowledge
• Extended onboarding periods
• Employee departures
• Process inconsistencies

Show how documentation culture directly impacts metrics leadership tracks.

Propose a pilot program:

Don't ask for organization-wide transformation. Start with one team or department.

"Let's run a 3-month pilot with the customer success team. We'll document their top 10 processes and measure impact on response time and new hire productivity."

Pilots are low-risk. They generate data. Success creates momentum.

Show quick wins:

Identify high-impact, low-effort documentation opportunities. Document one critical process that people ask about constantly. Measure the reduction in questions.

When leadership sees tangible results from minimal investment, they greenlight more.

Get executive sponsorship:

Find one leader who gets it. Someone who's felt the pain of lost knowledge. Make them the champion.

Executive sponsorship gives you air cover, budget, and organizational credibility. Other leaders follow.

Getting Team Buy-In

Your team will resist if documentation feels like extra work piled on top of existing responsibilities.

Address the "we don't have time" objection:

This is the most common pushback. Here's how I respond:

"You're already paying the time cost. Every time you answer the same question twice, that's time. Every time a new hire takes months to ramp up, that's time. We're not adding work. We're investing time once instead of paying the cost forever."

Show the math. If someone spends 30 minutes per week answering the same questions, that's 26 hours per year. Creating documentation once takes 2 hours.

Make it ridiculously easy:

Teams resist when documentation requires significant effort. Make it effortless.

At Glitter AI, you can screen record while working and automatically generate documentation. No separate writing task. No formatting decisions. Just hit record.

The easier documentation becomes, the less resistance you face.

Start with volunteers:

Don't force everyone to participate immediately. Find the early adopters on your team: people who already document or who are frustrated by lack of documentation.

Let them model the behavior. Share their successes. Create social proof.

Mandating participation creates resentment. Demonstrating value creates adoption.

Connect to personal benefits:

Help team members see how documentation helps them personally:

"When you document your processes, you can actually take vacation without constant interruptions."

"Documentation makes you promotable. It shows you multiply your impact through others."

"You'll stop answering the same questions over and over once they're documented."

People adopt behaviors that clearly benefit them.

Overcoming Specific Objections

"Our work is too complex to document."

Complex work benefits most from documentation. Start by documenting the framework and high-level approach. Details can be added iteratively.

Show examples of complex processes successfully documented. Every industry thinks they're special. They're not.

"Documentation gets outdated immediately."

This happens when updating documentation is hard. Make updates as easy as creation. Assign owners to maintain specific areas.

Just-in-time updates (fixing docs when you notice they're wrong) keep them current better than scheduled reviews.

"We tried this before and it failed."

Ask what made it fail. Usually it's because:

• The system was too complicated
• It was positioned as extra work
• Nobody maintained it
• People couldn't find what they needed

Address those specific failure points in your new approach.

"People won't write good documentation."

Not everyone needs to write. Video tutorials don't require writing skills. Show the process, explain out loud, and tools like Glitter AI generate the written documentation.

Focus on capturing knowledge in any format. Perfect writing can come later.

Building Coalition Across Teams

Documentation culture needs cross-functional support.

Find allies in different departments:

Customer Success feels the pain of repeated questions. Engineering loses knowledge when developers leave. Operations struggles with process inconsistencies.

Each department has documentation pain points. Find champions in each who will advocate internally.

Create a documentation working group:

Pull together 5-8 people from across the organization who care about knowledge sharing. Give them ownership of building the culture.

This distributed ownership creates grassroots momentum that top-down mandates never achieve.

Share success stories across teams:

When one team sees results from documentation, share those wins broadly.

"The customer success team documented their top 10 processes. New hire productivity increased 40% in the first month."

Success is contagious. Teams want what's working for others.

Getting Individual Contributors On Board

The people doing the actual work need to believe documentation matters.

Show immediate value:

When someone documents a process and it reduces their interruptions, highlight that. When documentation helps them solve a problem faster, point it out.

Make the connection between documentation and their daily pain points obvious and immediate.

Recognize contributors:

Public recognition matters. Shout out great documentation in team meetings. Include it in performance reviews. Give documentation awards.

The message needs to be crystal clear: documenting your knowledge is valued and rewarded here.

Make it social:

Share new documentation in team channels. Create visibility around who's contributing. Turn documentation into a team effort, not isolated work.

People are motivated by social dynamics. Leverage that.

Key Takeaways

• Frame documentation culture to leadership in terms of business outcomes and ROI
• Start with pilot programs to demonstrate value before scaling organization-wide
• Address the "we don't have time" objection by showing the time already being wasted
• Make documentation so easy that resistance is minimal
• Find early adopters and champions across different teams to build momentum

The right tools and processes make documentation culture sustainable. The wrong ones kill it before it starts.

Here's what actually works.

Choose the Right Documentation Platform

Your knowledge base is the foundation. Pick one that fits your team's needs and stick with it.

Key criteria for documentation platforms:

Easy to create content. If publishing documentation requires 20 clicks and approval workflows, people won't do it. Look for platforms where creating and updating content takes seconds.

Powerful search. People won't use documentation they can't find. Search needs to be fast, accurate, and surface relevant results. Test the search before committing.

Simple organization. Complex taxonomies and deep hierarchies confuse people. Your structure should be intuitive: organized by common questions, teams, or workflows.

Collaborative editing. Multiple people should be able to improve documentation simultaneously. Documentation is never one person's job.

Access control. Some documentation is internal-only. Some is customer-facing. Your platform needs to handle different access levels cleanly.

Integration with existing tools. Can people access documentation from Slack? From their CRM? From email? Documentation needs to be where people work.

Popular options:

Notion: Beautiful, flexible, and easy to use. Great for teams under 100 people. Search can be slow with large repositories.

Confluence: More structured, better for large organizations. Can feel heavy for small teams. Powerful but complex.

SharePoint: If you're already in the Microsoft ecosystem. Reliable but not exciting. Integration is the main benefit.

Guru: Knowledge management that surfaces information right where people work (Slack, Chrome, etc.). Clever approach for distributed teams.

Custom wikis: Can be tailored exactly to your needs, but require maintenance and technical resources.

The best documentation platform is the one your team will actually use. Don't get paralyzed by options. Pick something that reduces friction and commit to it.

Create Documentation in Multiple Formats

Different people learn differently. Strong documentation culture includes format variety.

Video documentation: Screen recordings showing exactly how to complete tasks. Best for visual learners and complex processes with lots of clicks.

I use Glitter AI for this: screen record while explaining the process out loud, and AI generates both the video guide and written documentation automatically.

Written guides: Step-by-step text instructions with screenshots. Best for people who prefer reading and for searchability.

Quick reference guides: One-page checklists or flowcharts. Best for experienced people who just need a reminder.

Live training: Real-time sessions where people can ask questions. Best for initial learning and complex topics.

At Glitter AI, we typically create video walkthroughs as primary documentation, then AI generates written versions automatically. People can watch or read based on preference.

Implement Simple Templates

Decision paralysis prevents documentation. Eliminate it with standardized templates.

For process documentation, use this structure:

• What this process is for (one sentence)
• When to use it (specific triggers)
• Prerequisites (what you need before starting)
• Step-by-step instructions (the actual process)
• Common issues and solutions (troubleshooting)
• Who to ask if stuck (point person)

For training documentation, use:

• Learning objective (what they'll be able to do after)
• Video walkthrough (showing the actual process)
• Key points summary (3-5 bullets)
• Practice exercise (if applicable)
• Resources for going deeper (links to related docs)

For decision documentation, use:

• Decision summary (what was decided in one sentence)
• Context (why we needed to decide)
• Options considered (what alternatives we evaluated)
• Decision rationale (why we chose this option)
• Implementation plan (next steps)

Templates make creating documentation faster and more consistent. People know exactly what to include.

Establish Clear Ownership

Every piece of important documentation needs an owner: someone responsible for keeping it current.

This doesn't mean they write everything. It means they're the point person who ensures documentation stays updated when processes change.

Assign ownership by domain:

• Customer Success owns onboarding and support documentation
• Engineering owns technical setup and deployment guides
• Sales owns demo scripts and pitch materials
• Operations owns internal process documentation
• Product owns feature documentation and roadmap

When something changes, the owner ensures documentation gets updated within 48 hours.

Display ownership clearly. Each doc should show who owns it and when it was last updated. This creates accountability.

Build Documentation Into Workflows

Documentation culture sticks when it's integrated into existing workflows, not added on top.

During onboarding: Record training sessions and turn them into documentation. You're training anyway; just hit record.

During project planning: Include "create documentation" as an actual task in your project management tool. If it's not in the checklist, it won't happen.

During process changes: Make updating documentation part of the rollout plan. The change isn't complete until docs are updated.

During problem-solving: When you solve a tricky issue, document the solution immediately while it's fresh. Add it to your troubleshooting guide.

During code reviews: Include documentation updates in pull request checklists. Code isn't ready to merge without documentation.

At Glitter AI, whenever I train someone on a new process, I'm simultaneously creating documentation. I screen record the training session, walk through each step out loud, and that recording becomes the guide for the next person.

It's not extra work. It's working smarter.

Set Up Review and Update Processes

Documentation isn't "set it and forget it." It needs maintenance.

Just-in-time updates: When someone finds outdated documentation while using it, they fix it immediately. This is the most important review cycle. Make it incredibly easy to suggest edits or make direct changes.

Quarterly reviews: Documentation owners review their areas and update anything that's changed. Takes an hour per quarter, prevents documentation from going stale.

Annual audits: Once a year, review all documentation and delete anything that's no longer relevant. Old, wrong documentation is worse than no documentation.

Automated staleness alerts: Set up reminders for documentation that hasn't been updated in 6+ months. Nudge owners to review and confirm it's still accurate.

At Glitter AI, we have a Slack channel called #docs-updates where people share when they've updated documentation. Creates visibility and accountability.

Create Documentation Champions

You need people on your team who are enthusiastic about documentation and model good behavior.

These aren't "documentation specialists." They're regular team members who happen to be great at documenting their work and encouraging others.

Identify 2-3 champions per team who:

• Naturally document things well
• Enjoy helping others
• Have credibility with their peers
• Care about knowledge sharing

Give them responsibilities:

• Lead by example with great documentation
• Help teammates who struggle to document
• Share documentation wins in team meetings
• Provide feedback on documentation quality
• Suggest improvements to processes

Recognize their contributions: Highlight their work publicly. Make it clear this matters for career advancement. Champions create social proof that documentation is valued.

Measure What Matters

You can't improve what you don't measure. Track these metrics:

Documentation coverage: What percentage of critical processes are documented? Start with the top 20 most-asked-about processes.

Usage metrics: How often are people accessing documentation? Page views, search queries, and time spent indicate whether docs are useful.

Contribution rates: What percentage of your team is actively creating or updating documentation? You want broad participation.

Time to productivity: How quickly can new hires contribute meaningfully? This should decrease as documentation improves.

Repeat questions: Track how often the same questions are asked. Decreasing frequency indicates improving documentation culture.

Don't obsess over metrics. Pick 2-3 that matter most and track them quarterly. If they're improving, your culture is strengthening.

Key Takeaways

• Choose one centralized documentation platform and commit to it
• Use multiple formats (video, written, checklists) to support different learning styles
• Provide simple templates to eliminate decision paralysis
• Assign clear owners to maintain documentation areas
• Build documentation into existing workflows rather than treating it as separate work

Even with the best tools and processes, you'll face resistance. Here's how to overcome the most common objections.

"We Don't Have Time to Document"

This is the number one objection, and I get it. Your team is already overwhelmed.

But here's the truth: you're already paying the time cost.

Every time someone asks "How do I do this?" and someone else stops work to explain, that's time.

Every time a new hire takes 6 months instead of 6 weeks to ramp up, that's time.

Every time someone leaves and you scramble to recreate their processes, that's massive time.

You're not choosing between "document" or "save time." You're choosing between "invest time once in documentation" or "pay the time cost forever."

The solution:

Make documentation so easy it happens while you're working. Screen record yourself completing a task while explaining what you're doing. That's your documentation. No extra time required.

At Glitter AI, documentation creation takes the same time as doing the work because they happen simultaneously.

"Documentation Gets Outdated Immediately"

I've seen this kill documentation culture at multiple companies.

Someone spends hours creating comprehensive docs. Then a process changes. Documentation becomes wrong. Nobody trusts it anymore.

The solution:

Make updating documentation as easy as creating it.

If someone notices documentation is wrong while using it, they should be able to fix it in under 60 seconds. Not submit a ticket. Not email the docs team. Just fix it immediately.

Build updates into process changes. When you roll out a new procedure, updating documentation is part of the rollout, not optional.

Assign owners who are responsible for keeping specific documentation areas current.

"Not Everyone Knows How to Write Good Documentation"

This is actually true. Writing clear, helpful documentation is a skill, and not everyone has it.

The solution:

Video documentation doesn't require writing skills.

When you screen record yourself doing a task while explaining what you're doing out loud, you're creating documentation that's often better than written guides.

It shows exactly what to click, what to type, what to expect. Visual learning is powerful.

If you use AI to transcribe and structure it (like we do at Glitter AI), you get the best of both worlds: video for visual learners, text for people who prefer reading.

"People Fear Becoming Replaceable"

Some team members worry that documenting all their knowledge makes them expendable.

It's a real concern, especially in uncertain economic times.

The solution:

Make it crystal clear that people who document their knowledge become MORE valuable, not less.

They become go-to experts. They enable entire teams to succeed. They get promoted because they multiply their impact through others. They build influence across the organization.

The people who hoard knowledge? They become bottlenecks. They can never take vacation. They're valuable only as long as nothing changes.

Frame it this way:

"Documenting knowledge is how you advance your career here. It shows leadership, strategic thinking, and impact beyond your individual output. Hoarding knowledge is how you stagnate."

Include knowledge sharing in performance reviews and promotion criteria. Make the incentives clear.

"Our Work is Too Complex to Document"

Every industry thinks they're special. They're not.

Complex work benefits most from documentation. You don't need to document everything perfectly. Start with the framework and high-level approach.

The solution:

Break complex processes into smaller, documented components. Each piece might be simple to document even if the whole is complex.

Use decision trees for processes with many exceptions. Visual flowcharts handle complexity better than linear instructions.

Document the 80% that's standard, then note where exceptions apply. Perfect documentation of simple processes is less valuable than good documentation of complex ones.

"We Tried This Before and It Failed"

Past failure creates resistance to new attempts.

The solution:

Ask what made it fail. Usually it's because:

• The system was too complicated
• It was positioned as extra work
• Nobody maintained it
• People couldn't find what they needed
• Leadership didn't model the behavior

Address those specific failure points explicitly in your new approach.

"Last time we tried SharePoint with complex approval workflows. This time we're using a simple system where anyone can create or update docs instantly."

"Last time leadership just told us to document. This time, our CEO is documenting his own processes first."

Show what's different. Learn from past mistakes.

"This Isn't Part of My Job"

Some people resist documentation because they see it as someone else's responsibility.

The solution:

Make it explicitly part of everyone's job description and performance expectations.

Include "creates and maintains documentation" in job descriptions, performance reviews, and team goals.

When documentation is optional, it doesn't happen. When it's required, it becomes normal.

But also make it so easy that compliance doesn't feel burdensome. If documentation takes 30 seconds, "it's not my job" becomes a harder argument.

"Documentation is Boring"

Let's be honest. Documentation isn't the most exciting work.

The solution:

Gamify it. Track who contributes most. Recognize top contributors. Create friendly competition between teams.

Make it social. Share documentation updates in team channels. Create visibility around contributions.

Connect it to impact. "Sarah's troubleshooting guide just saved 4 hours of debugging" makes documentation feel valuable and appreciated.

Frame it as multiplying your impact. "Your documentation just helped 10 people solve problems without your involvement. You just cloned yourself 10 times."

"We'll Do It Later"

Documentation constantly gets deprioritized.

The solution:

Make it part of the definition of done. Tasks aren't complete until documented.

Include documentation as actual tasks in project plans with owners and deadlines. What gets scheduled gets done.

Start small. Document one critical process this week. Build momentum with wins.

Use forcing functions. New code can't be merged without documentation updates. Process changes can't launch without updated docs.

Key Takeaways

• The "we don't have time" objection ignores the time already being wasted
• Make documentation so easy it happens while working, not as separate effort
• Video documentation solves the "can't write well" problem
• People who document knowledge become more valuable, not more replaceable
• Address specific failure points from past attempts when launching new initiatives

How do you know if your documentation culture is working? These metrics tell the story.

Leading Indicators: Early Signs of Success

These metrics show progress before full benefits materialize.

Documentation creation rate: How many new documents are being created per week? Early in the journey, this should increase as people start documenting.

Track both quantity and contributors. You want broad participation, not just a few power users.

Documentation update frequency: How often is existing documentation being updated? Regular updates indicate people are using and maintaining docs.

At Glitter AI, we track edits per week across our knowledge base. Healthy documentation culture shows consistent editing activity.

Search query volume: Increasing searches indicate people are trying to find information in documentation rather than asking colleagues. This is good, even if they don't always find answers yet.

Team member participation: What percentage of your team has created or updated at least one piece of documentation this month? You want this number increasing toward 80%+.

Lagging Indicators: Measurable Outcomes

These metrics show the actual business impact of documentation culture.

Time to productivity for new hires: How quickly can new employees contribute meaningfully? This should decrease as documentation improves.

Measure time from start date to first meaningful contribution. Track this quarterly and watch for improvement.

At my first startup, we cut onboarding time from 6 months to 6 weeks after building documentation culture. That's the kind of impact you're looking for.

Repeat question frequency: Are the same questions being asked repeatedly? Track questions in Slack, email, or your help desk.

When documentation culture is working, you should see:

• Decrease in repeated questions
• Increase in people referencing docs when answering
• More people saying "check the docs" instead of explaining

Support ticket volume: For customer-facing documentation, ticket volume should decrease as documentation quality improves.

Track tickets that could have been prevented by better documentation. Set a goal to reduce these by 50% over 6 months.

Knowledge retention after departures: When someone leaves, how much productivity is lost? How long does it take to recover?

Strong documentation culture means departures create minimal disruption. The knowledge stays even when the person leaves.

Meeting time reduction: How much time is spent in meetings transferring knowledge that should be documented?

As documentation culture improves, you should need fewer alignment meetings, fewer status updates, and less time bringing people up to speed.

Employee self-service rate: What percentage of questions are answered through documentation versus asking colleagues?

Track how often people find answers themselves versus interrupting others. Target 70%+ self-service rate.

Qualitative Measures

Numbers don't tell the whole story. Gather qualitative feedback too.

Employee satisfaction with knowledge access: Survey your team quarterly: "Can you easily find the information you need to do your job?"

Track responses over time. You should see increasing satisfaction as documentation culture strengthens.

New hire feedback: Ask new employees about their onboarding experience: "Did documentation help you get up to speed? What was missing?"

Their perspective is valuable because they experience your documentation with fresh eyes.

Documentation quality assessment: Periodically review a sample of documentation for:

• Clarity and usefulness
• Accuracy and currency
• Completeness and detail
• Findability and organization

Track quality scores over time. Early documentation might be rough. As culture matures, quality should improve.

Set Baseline Metrics

Before you start building documentation culture, measure your current state.

Conduct a baseline assessment:

• Time spent by employees searching for information (survey)
• Average onboarding time for new hires
• Number of critical processes documented
• Documentation page views per month
• Percentage of team creating documentation
• Repeat question frequency

This baseline lets you demonstrate improvement and ROI.

Create a Documentation Culture Dashboard

Make metrics visible to the whole organization.

Include:

• Number of docs created this month
• Top contributors
• Most viewed documentation
• Documentation coverage percentage
• Recent updates
• Quality score trends

Public dashboards create accountability and recognition. People see their contributions matter.

Measure ROI

Leadership wants to know: is documentation culture worth the investment?

Calculate the return:

Time savings: If 20 employees each save 3 hours per week finding information (from 5.3 hours down to 2.3 hours), that's 60 hours per week or 3,120 hours per year.

At $50/hour average cost, that's $156,000 in annual value.

Reduced onboarding costs: If you cut onboarding time from 12 weeks to 6 weeks, you've saved 6 weeks of reduced productivity per hire.

For 10 new hires per year at $75,000 salary, that's roughly $86,000 in value.

Prevented knowledge loss: When key employees leave without documentation, the replacement cost includes:

• Salary during unproductive period
• Mistakes and rework
• Lost revenue from delays
• Rehiring if replacement fails

If documentation prevents even one catastrophic knowledge loss event, it pays for itself.

Investment costs:

• Documentation platform subscription
• Tool costs (screen recording, etc.)
• Time spent creating initial documentation
• Training and change management effort

Most organizations see positive ROI within 6-12 months of building documentation culture.

Set Goals and Track Progress

Define specific, measurable goals for your documentation culture initiative.

Example 6-month goals:

• 80% of critical processes documented
• 50% of team actively contributing to documentation
• Average onboarding time reduced by 30%
• Documentation page views increased by 200%
• 70% of employees can find needed information without asking

Review progress monthly. Adjust tactics based on what's working.

Key Takeaways

• Track both leading indicators (creation rate, participation) and lagging indicators (time to productivity, repeat questions)
• Establish baseline metrics before starting to demonstrate improvement
• Measure qualitative factors like employee satisfaction and new hire feedback
• Calculate ROI by quantifying time savings and prevented knowledge loss
• Make metrics visible through dashboards to create accountability

I built Glitter AI specifically to solve the documentation culture problem I kept encountering.

At Simpo, we tried to build documentation culture. We bought tools. We set up wikis. We mandated documentation.

People still didn't do it.

Why? Because it was too hard, too time-consuming, and felt like extra work piled on top of already-full plates.

That's when I realized: documentation culture fails when documentation is hard.

If you want documentation to happen naturally, you need to make it effortless.

The Glitter AI Approach

Glitter AI removes the biggest barriers to documentation culture.

Documentation happens while you work: Instead of doing your work and then spending time documenting it separately, Glitter AI lets you document while you're working.

Screen record yourself completing a task. Talk through what you're doing as you do it. That's it.

The screen recording captures exactly what to click, what to type, what to see. Your voice explanation provides context and reasoning.

AI generates comprehensive documentation: Glitter AI's AI watches your screen recording and automatically generates:

• Step-by-step written instructions
• Screenshots at key moments
• Video segments for each step
• Text transcriptions of your explanations

You get both video documentation for visual learners and written documentation for people who prefer text, all from one recording session.

No special skills required: You don't need to be a good writer. You don't need to know how to format documentation. You don't need to decide what to include.

Just show the process and explain it naturally. AI handles the rest.

This democratizes documentation. Anyone can create high-quality docs, not just skilled writers.

How Glitter AI Enables Documentation Culture

Makes documentation effortless: When creating documentation takes 30 seconds instead of 30 minutes, people actually do it.

The "we don't have time" objection disappears because documentation doesn't require extra time.

Captures tacit knowledge: When you explain a process out loud while doing it, you naturally include context, reasoning, and tips that get lost in written documentation.

"I'm clicking here because..." "Watch out for this common issue..." "The reason we do it this way is..."

This tacit knowledge is the most valuable and hardest to capture. Glitter AI makes it automatic.

Keeps documentation current: When updating documentation is as easy as recording a new version, people actually keep docs updated.

Process changed? Record the new version. Takes 3 minutes. Documentation stays current.

Scales knowledge sharing: One person can create documentation that helps hundreds. Subject matter experts can scale their expertise without conducting repeated training sessions.

Record your process once. Share it with everyone. Answer questions once instead of repeatedly.

Builds documentation culture organically: When documentation is easy and valuable, culture builds naturally. You don't need to mandate it or force it.

People document because it makes their lives easier. They stop answering the same questions over and over.

Real-World Impact

Here's what happens when organizations use Glitter AI to build documentation culture:

Faster onboarding: New hires watch video guides created by experienced employees. They see exactly how to do tasks, hear the reasoning, and can review as many times as needed.

Onboarding time gets cut in half because knowledge transfer is efficient and self-service.

Reduced interruptions: When someone can watch a guide instead of asking a colleague, experts get their time back.

One customer told us: "I used to spend 2 hours per day answering the same questions. Now I just send people the Glitter guide."

Preserved knowledge: When employees leave, their knowledge stays because it's been captured in guides.

Process expertise, troubleshooting tips, client quirks: all preserved in video documentation that outlives individual tenure.

Consistent execution: When everyone watches the same training, everyone executes processes the same way.

Quality becomes consistent. Customer experience becomes predictable. Mistakes decrease.

Getting Started with Glitter AI

If you're serious about building documentation culture, here's how to use Glitter AI:

Start with your most-asked-about processes: Identify the 5-10 processes people ask about most frequently. Document those first using Glitter AI.

Screen record yourself completing each process while talking through the steps. Share the guides with your team.

You'll see immediate impact as those repeated questions stop coming.

Have subject matter experts create guides: The people who know processes best should document them. With Glitter AI, this doesn't require writing skills or extra time.

Just have them screen record while working and explaining. AI handles the documentation creation.

Build a searchable knowledge library: As you create guides, organize them in a central location where anyone can find them.

Tag them appropriately. Use descriptive titles. Link related content.

Over time, you build a comprehensive knowledge base with minimal effort.

Make documentation part of workflows: When onboarding new employees, record the training sessions as Glitter guides.

When rolling out process changes, create Glitter documentation as part of the rollout.

When solving complex problems, document the solution with Glitter immediately.

Documentation becomes integrated into how you work.

Measure and iterate: Track how often guides are viewed. Ask for feedback. Update guides based on actual usage.

The easy update process means documentation improves continuously based on real feedback.

The Result: Sustainable Documentation Culture

With Glitter AI, documentation culture doesn't require constant effort to maintain.

It becomes self-sustaining because:

• Creating documentation is easy
• Documentation is actually useful
• People see tangible benefits
• Knowledge gets preserved automatically

Instead of fighting to get people to document, you enable them to document as a natural part of working.

That's the difference between documentation culture that fails and documentation culture that thrives.

Key Takeaways

• Glitter AI makes documentation effortless by capturing it while you work
• Screen recording with voice explanation captures both explicit steps and tacit knowledge
• AI automatically generates both video and written documentation from one recording
• Easy documentation creation leads to sustainable documentation culture
• Organizations using Glitter AI see reduced onboarding time, fewer interruptions, and preserved knowledge

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Start Building Your Documentation Culture Today

Look, I won't pretend building documentation culture is easy or happens overnight.

It doesn't.

It requires commitment from leadership, consistent effort from teams, and real culture change. You'll face resistance. People will forget to document. Systems will get messy. Tools won't work perfectly.

But here's what I know after building documentation culture twice: the cost of NOT having it is way higher than the effort of building it.

Every time someone leaves and takes critical knowledge with them. Every time your team wastes hours searching for information that should be documented. Every time a new hire takes months instead of weeks to ramp up.

That's the real cost of no documentation culture. And it compounds. Every day without documentation culture makes the problem worse.

Start small. Pick one critical process and document it well. Show your team the value. Build momentum from there.

Make documentation effortless using tools that capture knowledge while people work, not as separate tasks. Accept "good enough" documentation over perfect documentation that never happens.

Celebrate people who document. Make it part of how you work, not extra work.

Lead by example. If you're a leader, visibly document your own processes. Show that nobody is too senior for this.

Get buy-in by speaking in terms of business outcomes: time saved, knowledge preserved, onboarding accelerated, risk reduced.

Build the tools and processes that make documentation sustainable. Assign ownership. Integrate into workflows. Measure what matters.

And remember: the best time to start building documentation culture was five years ago. The second best time is right now.

The knowledge walking out your door today won't be there tomorrow unless you capture it. The expertise scattered across your team won't help new hires unless it's accessible. The processes in people's heads won't survive turnover unless they're documented.

Start today. Document one process. Share it with your team. Measure the impact.

Then do it again. And again. Until documentation becomes as natural as the work itself.

If you're serious about building documentation culture, I invite you to try what I built at Glitter AI. I created it specifically to make documentation so easy that it happens naturally while your team works.

But whether you use Glitter AI or something else, just start documenting. Your future self, and your entire team, will thank you.

Yuval / Founder & CEO, Glitter AI

Frequently Asked Questions

What is documentation culture?

Documentation culture is a shared team mindset where creating, maintaining, and using documentation is valued, expected, and integrated into daily workflows. It means team members naturally document their knowledge and processes rather than keeping information in their heads, making organizational knowledge accessible and preserving it when people leave.

How do you build a documentation culture?

Build documentation culture by having leadership model documentation behavior first, integrating documentation into existing workflows rather than treating it as separate work, using simple templates to reduce friction, celebrating people who document well, and making it extremely easy to both create and find documentation using tools like Glitter AI. Start small with critical processes and expand from there.

What are the benefits of documentation culture?

Documentation culture reduces time wasted searching for information (saving up to 5 hours per week per employee), accelerates new hire onboarding from months to weeks, preserves institutional knowledge when employees leave, eliminates duplicate work from solving the same problems repeatedly, ensures process consistency across teams, and reduces interruptions from repeated questions. Companies save millions annually in efficiency gains.

How long does it take to build documentation culture?

Building true documentation culture typically takes 6-12 months to become ingrained in team habits, though you'll see benefits within the first month. Start by documenting 5-10 critical processes, model the behavior from leadership, create quick wins that demonstrate value, and consistently reinforce documentation expectations through recognition and accountability.

What are common barriers to documentation culture?

Common barriers include lack of time to document (solved by making it effortless with tools like screen recording), fear of becoming replaceable (addressed by rewarding knowledge sharing), scattered information across multiple platforms (fixed by centralizing knowledge), documentation getting outdated quickly (solved by making updates easy), and perfectionism preventing people from starting (overcome by accepting good enough documentation).

What tools do you need for documentation culture?

You need one centralized platform for storing documentation (like Notion, Confluence, or SharePoint) and a way to easily create process documentation. Screen recording tools like Loom or AI-powered options like Glitter AI make documentation effortless. The key is choosing tools your team will actually use consistently, not the most feature-rich options. Make creation and updates as easy as possible.

How do you measure documentation culture success?

Measure success through time to productivity for new hires (should decrease), repeat question frequency (should decrease), documentation usage and page views (should increase), percentage of team contributing to documentation (target 80%+), support ticket volume for preventable issues (should decrease), and employee satisfaction with finding needed information (should increase). Track quarterly and look for consistent improvement.

How do you overcome resistance to documentation?

Overcome resistance by making documentation so easy it happens while working (using screen recording), showing the time already being wasted on repeated questions and lost knowledge, connecting documentation to personal benefits like career advancement and fewer interruptions, addressing specific fears like becoming replaceable, and celebrating documentation wins publicly to create social proof that it's valued.