Most documentation is written once, read never, and out of date within a month. The problem isn't that people won't write it. It's that they write the wrong thing, for no one, at the wrong time.
Write for the person mid-task
Documentation fails when it tries to be a manual. What people actually need is the answer to the question they have right now: how do I run payroll, who approves this, what do I do when the export fails at 5pm. Short, findable, task-shaped notes beat a comprehensive handbook that no one ever opens.
The docs that get used tend to be:
- Findable in seconds, where the work happens — not buried in a drive no one searches.
- Owned by someone, with a date, so staleness is visible at a glance.
- Written from the doer's seat — the steps, the gotchas, the "if this breaks, do that."
The test of documentation isn't whether it's complete. It's whether someone reaches for it instead of asking the one person who knows.
Start with the knowledge that lives in a single person's head — the things that would stall if they were out for a week. Write those down first. That's not bureaucracy; it's the difference between a team and a single point of failure.