From Dusty Manuals to Dynamic Knowledge: How to Share Know-How That Drives Results
- jantimms3
- Aug 5, 2025
- 9 min read
Some franchise systems are sitting on gold mines of know-how — but no one’s digging.
Field teams run brilliant mentoring sessions, head office leaders record helpful Zoom walkthroughs, and high-performing franchisees share smart shortcuts… but too often, that valuable knowledge dies in a notebook, disappears with a departing team member, or gets buried in a system no one uses.
Yes, capturing know-how is essential. But it’s only half the job.
To truly protect and leverage the intellectual capital within your network, you must store, organise, maintain, and communicate your explicit knowledge in ways that are searchable, practical, and actually used in the field. A dusty operations manual — whether physical or digital — just doesn’t cut it anymore.
Let’s explore what it takes to create a dynamic knowledge fuel tank that actually fuels performance across your network.
Why Manuals and Intranets Don’t Cut It Anymore
Once upon a time, the franchise operations manual was the holy grail — multiple volumes, neatly tabbed, outlining every step of the system. The theory was solid: document everything, hand it over, and you’ve got a scalable business model.
The problem? Those manuals became out of date the moment they were printed.
Even as networks moved into the digital age — migrating content to intranet sites and later to knowledge management systems — the core issue didn’t go away. Outdated content was simply moved from one place to another, and franchisees still didn’t use it. Why? Because the material was too hard to find, too dense to use, and too irrelevant to today’s real-world challenges.
Let’s be clear: the system you use to store your knowledge is far less important than how the knowledge itself is written, updated, and communicated.
Modern franchise networks don’t need rule books — they need practical, up-to-date, searchable “how-to” guides that help people do their jobs better. They need to move beyond compliance checklists and into alignment tools that help franchisees succeed in a dynamic, fast-changing world.
If your current knowledge system isn’t actively enabling better decisions, faster onboarding, and stronger performance — it’s not a knowledge asset. It’s a liability.
What Today’s Franchise Knowledge System Needs
The goal isn’t just to store knowledge — it’s to make it usable, findable, and relevant.
Franchisees today aren’t looking for a library of rules — they want guidance that’s fast, helpful, and immediately applicable to their day-to-day challenges. That means ditching the dense manuals and building a dynamic knowledge fuel tank designed to support learning and action.
So what does that actually look like?
Your knowledge system must be:
Topic-based | Organised around real-world problems and activities, not head office jargon |
Single-source | Each topic has one clear home (no hunting through five folders to find the answer) |
Searchable | Franchisees can find what they need with just a few keywords |
Instructional and inspiring | Written like a how-to guide, not a policy document |
Up-to-date and relevant | Maintained regularly so franchisees trust the information they’re using |
The shift here is fundamental: stop talking about rules and start talking about results. Replace “this is what you must do” with “here’s how to succeed.” That’s the kind of knowledge people actually use.
The system you use matters less than how you use it. Many franchisors already subscribe to Microsoft 365, which includes SharePoint — a powerful tool for storing, structuring, and searching your refined knowledge. It’s not about fancy bells and whistles. It’s about making knowledge work for your network.
The Process of Checking and Creating Explicit Knowledge
Whether you’re starting from scratch or updating an outdated system, the first step is always the same: check whether your existing knowledge is current, accurate, and relevant.
For start-up networks, this means extracting raw tacit knowledge from your top performers and turning it into clear, actionable guidance. For established networks, it means auditing what you’ve already documented — identifying what can be kept, what needs refining, and what should be thrown out.
Start With an Audit
What’s still valid and helpful?
What’s outdated or irrelevant?
Where are the gaps — the knowledge your franchisees need but don’t currently have?
Use efficient methods to gather new insights
Today’s tools make it easier than ever to capture and refine tacit knowledge into explicit know-how:
Record Zoom sessions and online meetings — they can be transcribed and cleaned up for documentation
Use screen share walkthroughs and Q&A sessions to extract processes
Record telephone interviews using apps like ACR, then transcribe
Use face-to-face visits only when necessary — for observing physical processes like customer service, demonstrations, or team interactions
Always ask: What did we learn, and where does this belong in the knowledge fuel tank?
This approach doesn’t just speed up the process — it ensures that what gets documented is actually useful in the field. Done well, these methods halve the time required to create or update explicit knowledge and turn everyday conversations into lasting assets.
Every interaction is a potential crude oil extraction moment. But unless that insight is captured, refined, and stored where others can find it — it evaporates.
What Should Be in the Knowledge Fuel Tank?
Early operations manuals focused almost exclusively on operations — how to open the doors, deliver the service, follow the system. That may have worked when foot traffic, word of mouth, and Yellow Pages listings drove business. But those days are long gone.
In today’s environment, franchisees need more than operations know-how — they need fuel to grow their business.
It’s not enough to teach them how to deliver your product or service. You must also equip them with practical, proven knowledge in areas like:
Marketing and promotions
Local area lead generation
Sales techniques (especially for those who aren't natural sellers)
Customer experience and retention
Team development and management
Financial performance and profitability
Take the example of Sue, the marketing manager for one of my franchisor clients. Sue noticed that many franchisees lacked confidence in sales conversations, especially outbound selling. To help bridge this gap, she started running monthly sales forums, sharing tips, resources, and success stories from the field. She even followed up with short sales “knowledge bites” shared via Microsoft Teams after each session.
It was a good initiative — but it fell flat.
Why? Because the knowledge never made it into the formal system. There was no structure for storing the knowledge bites, no reinforcement through coaching, and no link to relevant how-to content or learning materials. Franchisees didn’t know where to find the resources, didn’t trust they were relevant, and quickly stopped engaging. A few read the updates, even fewer applied them — and nothing changed.
This is the danger of fragmented knowledge sharing. Good ideas get lost in the noise, and the opportunity to build consistent capability across the network disappears.
If you want knowledge to drive performance, it must go beyond broadcast. It needs to be captured, organised, and embedded into the systems franchisees already use.
Operations knowledge gets the doors open. Growth knowledge keeps them open.
How to Organise It All So People Can Find and Use It
You can have the most valuable, up-to-date knowledge in the world — but if it’s buried in a maze of folders or scattered across different systems, it won’t get used.
Organisation is everything.
That’s why your knowledge fuel tank needs a clear, consistent structure that reflects how franchisees think and operate — not how head office departments are organised.
Start With User-Focused Categories |
Use plain language that speaks directly to your network. For example:
These aren’t just labels — they signal relevance. They help franchisees think: “This is for me.” |
Break each category into sections |
Example: under Run My Business, you might have:
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Break Each Section into Practical, Searchable Topics |
Under Make My Workplace Safe, for instance:
This approach helps in three ways:
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Remember: the structure doesn’t have to be perfect from day one. It just needs to be clear, intuitive, and easy to evolve. Think of it as building a well-labelled fuel tank — one that makes your refined knowledge accessible exactly when your franchisees need it. |
Maintaining the Knowledge Fuel Tank
You’ve mapped your knowledge categories, gathered the crude oil, refined it into clear guidance, and organised it into a searchable, structured system.
Done, right?
Wrong!
If you stop here, your shiny new knowledge fuel tank will quickly go the way of the old operations manual — outdated, unused, and irrelevant. In today’s fast-paced franchise environment, change is constant — and that means your knowledge system must be continuously maintained.
Let me give you a few real examples from recent client projects:
A freshly updated Make My Workplace Safe section was due to be showcased in an upcoming knowledge spotlight session. But when we double-checked it just two weeks later, some of the external WHS links were already dead.
A new automated system had been launched to boost Google reviews and collect Net Promoter Score feedback — requiring a full topic rewrite and the creation of new learning materials.
Changes in the IT department led to new helpdesk procedures, which instantly rendered the existing step-by-step instructions obsolete.
These kinds of updates aren’t the exception — they’re the norm in any thriving, adaptive franchise network.
That’s why maintaining your knowledge fuel tank isn’t optional. It needs to be built into your operations and resourced accordingly.
Here’s What That Looks Like In Practice:
Allocate ongoing responsibility to your Learning Transfer Station — the team responsible for ensuring knowledge is not only maintained, but usable and transferred into action
Set aside time and budget — as a rule of thumb, I recommend around 20 hours per month for ongoing maintenance (more during times of major change)
Encourage all team members — especially field support and subject matter experts — to regularly feed updates and new insights back into the system
And most importantly: make it a habit to ask “Where does this go in the fuel tank?”
Every time knowledge is shared — whether it’s in a Zoom meeting, a forum, a field visit, or an informal discussion — someone needs to own it. That means:
Capturing the insight
Refining it into a usable format
Handing it to the Learning Transfer Station for storage, organisation, and rollout
Without that handover, the knowledge fades. With it, you build a living system that grows stronger every month.
Accountability and Ownership
Creating a knowledge fuel tank isn’t just about systems and structure — it’s about culture and accountability.
If no one owns the knowledge, it doesn’t get shared. If no one is responsible for refining it, it stays rough and inaccessible. And if no one ensures it’s embedded into daily practice, it never drives results.
That’s where clear roles and expectations come in.
Here’s The Mindset to Build Across Your Network:
If you learn something useful — you own it. Whether it’s a great idea shared in a peer forum, a smart process improvement discovered in the field, or a common question that keeps coming up — it’s your responsibility to capture that insight and ask: 👉 “What did we learn?” 👉 “Where does this belong in the knowledge fuel tank?” |
If you’re the one discovering or sharing the insight, you’re also responsible for refining and documenting it — even if it’s just a quick note, voice memo, or screen recording. |
Your Learning Transfer Station is then responsible for maintaining the fuel tank — making sure the knowledge is stored correctly, accessible, up-to-date, and supported by learning resources where needed. |
Without This Handover, The Value Is Lost.
Take Sue again — she shared bite-sized sales knowledge via Microsoft Teams, but it wasn’t documented, tagged, or embedded into the broader learning system. The result? It disappeared into the digital void. No reinforcement. No accountability. No impact.
The reality is this: capturing explicit knowledge isn’t the end goal. Transferring it into learning and action is. That’s why the fifth element of the GRASP model — Sharing Know How — is so vital.
To make this work, build the habit across your network:
👉 “What did we learn?”
👉 Where does this belong?”
👉 “Who’s responsible for refining and transferring it?”
When those questions become second nature, your network stops losing knowledge — and starts building momentum.
Conclusion: From Dusty to Dynamic — Fuel Your Franchise with Sharable Know-How
Outdated manuals. Disconnected intranets. Forgotten forums. It’s time to stop pretending that storing knowledge is the same as sharing it.
If you want to stop the franchise brain drain, you need more than storage. You need a dynamic knowledge fuel tank that captures, refines, organises, and maintains the know-how that drives success — and makes it easy for franchisees to find and use it when it counts.
This isn’t about building a library. It’s about building momentum.
When knowledge is structured around real-world tasks, written to inspire action, and kept current through shared accountability, it becomes a competitive advantage — one that grows stronger with every contribution.
So ask yourself…
Is your knowledge fuel tank fit for purpose?
Or are your best ideas still gathering dust?
Want Help Putting It into Practice?If you're serious about lifting franchisee performance and protecting the intellectual capital in your network, it’s time to put knowledge to work, the Franchise Growth Bundle will help you to get started. It includes:
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