A major part of leading a big tech organization is making sure that the team doesn’t get bogged down by constantly having to reinvent the wheel, especially internally. Greatness, and simply sticking to your deadlines, comes from standing on the shoulders of giants and those in your team that have already made the needed decisions.

Too often companies neglect the nurturing of their own internal best practices. This gets attention usually whenever a new hire raises questions that you think should be common knowledge across the team, but is probably happening dozens of times a day without you noticing.

It’s rare that I visit a client and don’t notice someone raise a question that should be obvious and known, and yet the answer tends to be “I don’t know, but maybe you should talk to X.” If we’re lucky, X marks the spot. More often than not, the poor developer that asked that question will now move along the office (or many emails and hours) as if they’re in a pinball machine, jumping from one pointing finger to the next.

When this keeps happening daily, how long do you think it will be before people will get used to simply not asking questions? A big aspect of leveling up your team’s expertise and execution is to make sure these things are streamlined, not a daily time waste.

Develop a culture of sharing and nurturing best practices. Collect all these common issues and have them written down somewhere accessible. They might become outdated, but trust me–it’s better than nothing. And ensure that your team members know how to spot whenever they are doing something that someone else is likely to have thought about. Cultivating this culture is crucial in reducing failure work and creating an effective organization.