Answers where the question comes up
Not in a manual but at the point in the system where you are standing. Nobody looking for the procedure looks in the manual.
Practice / Knowledge in the business
Knowledge in the business
Most businesses have procedures that work. Often they are not written down in a way anyone can follow, or they sit in a manual that is rarely opened in daily work.
The starting point
The work
in between.
- How something is done is known because someone showed you once. There is nothing to read.
- New people learn by watching and by making mistakes. Both cost more than any description would have.
- Exceptions and special cases are known only to whoever has been there a long time, and get explained from scratch every time.
- What was written down sits in a folder whose structure one person knows. People ask a colleague anyway.
- When someone leaves, answers are missing for years. Some questions stop being asked, because the earlier solution is not visible in daily work.
A suitable design
What needs to
work together.
These components describe one possible individual scope. Scope and rules are agreed with your business.
Knowledge grows out of cases
What comes up repeatedly becomes a description, assembled from the actual cases, with a link to each one. Not from memory.
Every answer shows its source
Each piece of information says where it comes from and who last confirmed it. An answer without a source does not appear.
One shared source for the subject
People read the description in plain words. Agents get structured rules, permissions, negative cases and tests out of the same source, prepared to suit.
An example decision card
A special case has come up for the third time
It was solved differently each time. Twice it worked, once there was a complaint.
A draft of a short description is ready, assembled from the three cases, not invented.
What is the draft made of?
- the three cases in which it came up
- what was done each time
- what happened afterwards
- → described, not judged. What is right is your call.
07 · To click through
The question that usually gets asked in passing.
Four questions as they really sound inside a business. Look at the last one in particular. It is the actual point.
Answer
In all three cases so far, the work done up to that point was billed and the material ordered was passed on where it could not be returned. Twice a lump-sum deduction was agreed, once it was not.
Out of what
- A job last spring, cancelled after the material was ordered
- A job in the summer, cancelled before the start, no material involved
- A job in the autumn, cancelled while the work was under way
Last confirmed 4 months ago. No written rule on file.
An illustration. The questions, the answers and the sources are invented. In your business they come out of your own cases.
An answer without a source does not appear
That is the difference to a tool that says something to every question. Here every piece of information carries where it comes from and when it was last confirmed, so that you can contradict it once it stops being true.
The fourth question is the important one
It shows what happens when nothing is on file: nothing. A system that produces something plausible here is more dangerous in daily use than one that stays quiet, because nobody checks an answer that already looks like one.
The countercheck
Where things
can go wrong.
The mistake is wanting to describe everything in the same detail. Priority comes from how often something happens and how much damage it can do. A rare safety, emergency or compliance procedure can be worth documenting for exactly that reason. Descriptions that have gone stale are checked visibly rather than used on quietly.
A useful first trial includes this failure case explicitly. Fast processing alone is not success if checking and correction create more work.
The connection to the next task
Your first stage
Start where
the work improves.
For Knowledge in the business, we choose a bounded first outcome with your team. Existing specialist systems can stay where they fulfil necessary requirements. We compare time relief, payments that can end and the cost of the new way of working.
The workshop gives you priorities and a roadmap. You can continue internally or with support from Markus Kirchmair. The choice of model and agent follows the task, with data and rules retained outside an individual chat.
Explore the workshop →Ready for the next change
Keep the work simple.
The first view should show the next relevant decision. Reasoning and sources remain accessible. We leave out unnecessary features and make actual progress visible.
When a rule changes, agents can help investigate the impact, prepare the adjustment and update tests and documentation. A qualified person assesses the result and its adoption.
Try a change →Your first step
Say yes
to less.
Less unnecessary software. More room for your work. Let’s find the useful first step.