The 60-Second Knowledge Test: Can Your Employees Find the Right Information?
FIND | AI-Ready Deep Dive
Finding a file isn’t the same as finding the correct information.
This week, I tested something simple on myself.
Could I find a few everyday documents in 60 seconds?
I searched for my college transcript, tax records, military documents, current resume, and EverGX business documents. These were things I’ve looked for more than once and sometimes had a hard time finding.
Most of the searches were quick.
My resume was different.
I found plenty of resumes. The problem was figuring out which one I actually wanted.
I had different versions created for different jobs. Some were stored in an Admin folder instead of the Resume folder where I expected them to be. Search found many of them, but that didn’t answer the most important question:
Which one was the correct, complete, current version I should actually use?
That wasn’t obvious.
And that exposed a much larger business problem.
Finding Something Isn’t the Same as Knowing It’s Right
I cleaned up my resume files, moved them into a more logical location, identified the current version, and improved the naming convention.
That helped.
The current Word version came up immediately.
The PDF should have also, but I had accidentally named it:
IsaacCurrent_Full-Resume_2026
instead of separating Isaac and Current with an underscore.
It was a small difference, but that PDF appeared much lower in the search results.
I also found several older resume versions in Google Drive that didn’t come up in Windows Search at all.
That gave me several problems at once:
→ multiple versions
→ files in unexpected locations
→ inconsistent naming
→ no clear current version
→ information stored in more than one system
But there’s an important limitation to this experiment.
This was my personal file environment. It wasn’t a corporate network with hundreds of employees, years of project files, document-management systems, shared drives, permissions, and multiple business applications.
So I don’t think the lesson is, “Windows Search doesn’t work.”
It also isn’t, “Google Drive is the problem.”
The lesson is much broader.
Search can work well and the business can still have a knowledge problem.
A Real Business Environment Can Look Very Different
A company might keep information in an M365 environment using SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, and other Microsoft tools.
Another company may primarily use Google Workspace and Shared Drives.
Another may have years of documents sitting on network file servers.
Others may also use systems such as Confluence, Jira, a CRM, a document-management system, databases, or specialized industry software.
And many businesses use some combination of these.
Those environments don’t all behave the same way.
Microsoft, for example, says Microsoft Search can search information stored in Microsoft 365 as well as external information that has been indexed through connectors. Microsoft also provides a File Share connector that can make content from on-premises Windows file shares searchable through Microsoft Search and Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Google takes a different approach inside its ecosystem. Google Shared Drives are designed so files belong to the team instead of one individual, and the files remain when an employee leaves. Google also recommends clear naming conventions and separating active, archived, and reference content.
So the question isn’t whether one search product is better than another.
The better question is:
What information environment has the business created around its search tools?
Search Results and Authoritative Information Aren’t the Same Thing
This distinction matters.
Search systems are designed to help users find relevant information.
Microsoft says its search results are ranked using relevance algorithms. Google Drive also allows search results to be sorted by relevance.
That’s useful.
But relevant isn’t automatically the same thing as authoritative.
Imagine an employee searches for a company procedure and receives five results:
→ Procedure_Final.docx
→ Procedure_Final_v2.docx
→ Procedure_Updated.docx
→ Procedure_2025.pdf
→ New_Procedure_DRAFT.docx
The search system may have done its job perfectly.
It found five highly relevant files.
The employee still has a problem.
Which one should they trust?
That’s the issue FIND is designed to expose.
What Does “Authoritative” Mean?
For the 60-Second Knowledge Test, I’m using three words:
Correct + Current + Authoritative
Correct means the information is accurate for the question being asked.
Current means it hasn’t been replaced by something newer.
Authoritative means the employee has a reason to trust that this is the version the organization intends them to use.
That last part matters.
A document might be technically current because someone edited it yesterday. That doesn’t necessarily mean it was approved.
A file might be owned by one person in a software system. That doesn’t necessarily mean that person is responsible for maintaining the business information inside it.
A document may rank first in search. That doesn’t necessarily make it company policy.
Some platforms provide tools that can help businesses manage these questions.
SharePoint and OneDrive, for example, support version history so users can see previous versions, track changes, and restore earlier versions. SharePoint libraries can also be configured with content approval, which can distinguish approved content from drafts or pending material.
These capabilities are useful, but technology alone doesn’t make the decision for the business.
Someone still has to decide:
→ What is the approved source?
→ Who is responsible for it?
→ When should it be reviewed?
→ How should employees recognize it?
→ What happens to older versions?
Those are business and information-management questions.
What Better Information Organization Looks Like
The goal isn’t to create a perfect folder structure or force every company into one system.
Different businesses will need different approaches.
But a healthy information environment should make a few things easier.
Employees should be able to:
→ search in a logical place
→ understand what information they are looking at
→ identify the current version
→ recognize drafts, archived material, and approved information
→ know who or what team is responsible for important content
→ access information they are authorized to use
→ avoid asking another employee where routine information is stored
That last one is especially important.
If an employee has to ask an admin, manager, boss, or senior employee where a routine document lives, the business is using another person’s memory as part of its search system.
That may work in a five-person company.
It becomes harder to defend as the organization grows.
Why This Matters Before Adding More AI
This is where FIND connects to AI readiness.
AI can make interacting with business information much easier.
Instead of clicking through folders, employees may be able to ask:
“What’s our current process for approving this?”
and receive an answer immediately.
That’s powerful.
But it doesn’t remove the underlying information problem.
If the business has several versions of the procedure, unclear ownership, outdated documents, drafts mixed with approved information, or important content outside the systems being searched, an AI layer doesn’t automatically decide which version the company considers authoritative.
It may make finding information faster without fixing the question:
“Can I trust this?”
That’s why I don’t think AI readiness begins with buying another AI tool.
It begins with understanding the business underneath it.
Before you buy more AI, fix the business behind it.
Want to see where your organization stands? Take the EverGX AI-Ready Scorecard to identify where you may have gaps.
The 60-Second Knowledge Test
You don’t need a major technology project to start looking for this problem.
Pick one piece of information employees regularly need.
Then run this test:
→ Choose something important. A policy, procedure, template, project file, price list, contract form, checklist, or other common information.
→ Give yourself 60 seconds.
→ Find the correct, current, authoritative information.
→ Ask whether a typical employee would know they found the right answer without asking someone else.
The goal isn’t simply to beat the clock.
The 60 seconds gives you a simple way to expose friction.
The real test is whether the employee can find something and confidently say:
“Yes. This is the information I’m supposed to use.”
If they can’t, start asking why.
Was it hard to find?
Were there duplicates?
Was the naming confusing?
Were drafts mixed with final versions?
Was the content stored somewhere unexpected?
Was ownership unclear?
Did the employee find several good-looking answers with no way to tell which one was authoritative?
Those questions tell you more about AI readiness than whether the company has purchased the newest AI product.
FIND Comes Before More AI
My small resume test didn’t recreate the complexity of a real company.
It wasn’t meant to.
What it did was expose the same categories of questions that businesses should be asking about their own information:
Can people find it?
Can they tell if it’s current?
Can they tell if it’s correct?
Can they tell if it’s authoritative?
That’s the standard.
Not whether a search box returns something.
Not whether the business owns M365 or Google Workspace.
Not whether an AI assistant can summarize a document.
The first question is much simpler:
Can employees find the correct, current, authoritative information they need in 60 seconds without asking someone else where it is?
Try it inside your organization.
You may learn more from those 60 seconds than you expect.
Want to see where your organization stands? Take the EverGX AI-Ready Scorecard to identify where you may have gaps across your business.
References
This article combines observations from the EverGX 60-Second Knowledge Test with current product documentation from Microsoft and Google.
Microsoft
- Microsoft Search overview
- Microsoft 365 Copilot File Share connector
- SharePoint and OneDrive version history
- SharePoint document-library versioning and content approval
- Google Drive search
- Google Workspace Shared Drives
- Google Workspace best practices for organizing and naming Shared Drives
EverGX | 7 Weeks to an AI-Ready Business
Week 1: FIND
Primary question: Can employees find the correct, current, authoritative information they need quickly?
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