Fortumo helps digital companies acquire, monetize and retain users via telcos. They have 7 offices across the globe with more than 70 team members, serving customers from all over the world.
It is a challenging task to keep everyone in sync with 70+ teammates and between 7 office locations, but it works well for Fortumo. What’s the secret sauce?
We had a chat with Anni, the Customer Relations Team Lead from Fortumo, to learn more about how the team engages everyone to improve the team knowledge base together. When team knowledge becomes more accessible, team members can stay more focused on their actual work without being distracted by repeated questions.
It is all about culture starting from day one
Anni emphasized the term “culture” a few times during the chat as it is the most important reason of getting everyone engaged with improving the team knowledge base.
The process starts as soon as a person joins the team. Instead of simply reading through the onboarding documents, new hires at Fortumo are encouraged to report and improve the potential outdatedness or missing pieces in the documents.
This turns every new hire into an opportunity to improve the team knowledge base with brand new perspectives.
As a new team member at Fortumo, you immediately feel that the team needs your input instead of simply working on assigned tasks. Down the road, reporting issues to keep the knowledge base up-to-date simply becomes a habit and a part of the team culture to further fuel the team knowledge base with new perspectives.
Periodic review with the whole team
When time passes by and the team evolves, some of the team knowledge becomes obsolete or outdated inevitably. Some teams don’t spend enough efforts in keeping the information up-to-date and the knowledge base simply becomes a ghost town that no one visits because the information is not reliable.
In Fortumo, reviewing documentation is part of everyday processes and the way how we do things. The team fixes the issues on the go, but in addition to that, every team organizes periodical documentation reviews and cleanups. There is not a huge process behind it, as the goal is to try and cut away the bureaucracy and make things as easy as possible. Otherwise, it would become a burden instead of common sense.
Everyone can contribute to the team knowledge base
Fortumo is promoting an open working culture and there are no limitations on who can update the team knowledge base because everyone is more knowledgeable than someone else in specific areas.
In that case, every team member is encouraged to update the team knowledge base whenever they see something wrong or outdated.
It’s all about the trust and working towards a mutual goal.
We were curious about how they are not worried about someone messing up the team knowledge base. Anni replied, “It’s all about the trust and working towards a mutual goal. We hire the right people who match our culture – proactive and helpful. Everybody sees the benefit of up-to-date documentation, so for us, it’s rather a common sense that everyone participates in making things better.”
By introducing the culture of contributing to the team knowledge base since day one joining the team, everyone in Fortumo is eager to look up information when there are any issues and provide feedback to improve it. The team knowledge base can then grow in a collaborative way.
That’s how great teams grow as a whole instead of different smart individuals spending the time to solve the same problems multiple times. Interested in joining the team with such a great knowledge sharing culture? Check out their openings.
