Your day to day
The half-hour tidy-up each month
What degrades by itself if nobody looks, and how to fix it without a project.
A document system does not break suddenly: it degrades. Every month brings duplicate contacts, files nobody closed, templates no longer used, and alerts going to people who left. Two years in, searching costs twice as much and nobody knows why.
The five things worth checking
- 1
Files stuck for more than three months
Either restart or close them. Leaving them open pollutes every count.
- 2
Duplicate or dormant contacts
The same supplier with three records is the number one cause of "I can't find it".
- 3
Alerts going to people who have left
Alerts nobody reads are worse than no alerts.
- 4
Templates that no longer match how you work
An outdated template keeps being used, which is why it hurts.
- 5
And outsiders' access
The accountancy firm from two years ago, the consultant on the finished project.
Important
The half hour pays for itself the same month. The commonest cause of "this is slow" or "I can't find anything" is not volume: it is duplicates and things left open that are not.
What NOT to do in that half hour
| Temptation | Why not |
|---|---|
| Reorganise the whole structure | Half an hour will not do it and you will leave it halfway |
| Delete old documents | They take little space and deleting is irreversible |
| Change how the team works | That is not tidying, it is a project with its own conversation |
Watch out
And above all, do not leave it for "when there's a gap". The gap never comes, and degradation compounds: half an hour a month is trivial; eight hours a year, once it hurts, is hard to get anyone to commit to.
How to know it is needed
Any of the four means the tidy-up has been skipped for a while. All four together mean it will happen anyway, just in the form of an incident.
Worth knowing
Have the same person do it at the same point each month. Not for bureaucracy: because that is how you spot drift by comparing with last month, which is the part that actually warns you.
›What if we are very few?
All the more reason: degradation does not depend on size and here nobody fixes it behind you.
›Can it be automated?
Alerts about what is stuck, yes. Deciding what to close, no.
›Is half an hour realistic?
Not the first month; from the second, yes.
A real case
The situation
A team complains that finding things keeps getting harder.
What you do
- Spends half an hour on duplicates, stuck files and external access
What you get
Searches return one result instead of three, with nothing about how they work changed.
The situation
Over a year, forty half-closed files and twelve unused templates pile up.
What you do
- Reserves half an hour a month to review
- Closes what is only awaiting confirmation
- Archives templates with no activity
What you get
The open list becomes credible again and the metrics say something.
The situation
There are duplicate contacts at the same company.
What you do
- Merges duplicates in the monthly review
What you get
The supplier receives one, not three.
The situation
Documents past their retention period pile up.
What you do
- Reviews what is due under the policy
What you get
The archive stops growing without criteria.
The situation
There are active accounts for people who have left.
What you do
- Cross-checks users against joiners and leavers
What you get
The active accounts are the right ones.
The situation
The clean-up is postponed because it is never urgent.
What you do
- Puts it in the calendar like any other task
What you get
It happens because it is due rather than when it hurts.
This article answers
- keeping documentation tidy
- cleaning up duplicate contacts
- periodic review of the document system
- why finding things keeps getting harder