Heya community!
I have a question if anyone already used Johnny’s decimal system to organize internal company documentation? And if yes, how did you guys do it?
My main “blocker” is that it only allows 2 levels down and we have many departments and areas within those departments to organize documentation in. Any help would be highly apprised and as well if further details are needed please do let me know to provide since I know this is pretty plain post.
Thank you and best, Matic
First question is, what’s the structure of the company? Can you give us an idea, even if you make it generic to protect privacy if required?
Sure!
Here I am attaching the image of the full hierarchy (proposing that at least one person is in each team (or ending division).
Even though there are just 5 of us and we don’t individually fulfill each department, I believe it’s a much better starting point, as it will be hard to later organize and modify the JD “nesting” system. However, I do agree it could be optimized.
That’s also where the core problem arises. Do I just take a plain route and implement a JD system in each team (which will make it really hard to search anything as everyone has access to everything in terms of documentation) or do I start at the top (but in case that happens, then there are more than 2 layers deep to even come to actual teams let alone the file)?
Thank you!
Best, Matic
Just adding my two cents there. Do you have buy-in from the rest of the team for the implementation? I am running my personal jD Index for years but when I started looking at implementing this for the company I am working with now I realized that the more people are involved it gets more complicated if everyone is actively contributing to the content and generate new numbers. You would need to be on top of it at all times and have a routine in making sure the numbers are kept in check and updated across the landscape of applications and tools you use it.
Where are you planning to keep the main index (the one source of truth so to say)?
I am very much interested in your implementation and hope you will be successful, so far I have backed away from it to push it further within our organization / department and just keep it personal and for myself.
Hmm, yes you are right. It would require everyone to be extremely concise. Hard decision really.
Regarding the index, I was thinking of one index per team. So we can already scratch the other ideas because it would be pretty much impossible.
Honestly, haven’t wrapped my head around it, but I truly do appreciate the concern. A lot more complicated than expected.
Best, Matic
May I suggest a slightly different approach? Instead of thinking about the JD hierarchy as a pure representation of the company org chart, maybe think about the high-level types of information your organisation wants to be able to group together and find. At a high-level this might be areas that look like “Technical”, “Financial”, “Administrative”, “Marketing”, etc.
Also, if you do decide to go company-wide, then you’re going to need some evangelists on your side, preferably one in most teams, and you also need a seamless way to add to the index.
I’ve had the most success by letting people just create things ad hoc, even if completely wrong, and then catch it at inception and guide the person to a better ID and category if necessary.
Johnny goes into this is some detail in the new workbook which I thoroughly recommend. 14.02 The Decimal Workbook║J•D It’s great.
