For my teams it's always been a cultural thing. Whenever something comes up, someone (at first, probably you!) has to ask: "would a runbook have helped here?".

For my teams it's always been a cultural thing. Whenever something comes up, someone (at first, probably you!) has to ask: "would a runbook have helped here?". If so, give the person time to write a quality runbook. Also when things change, you have to remember to update your runbooks. Also wanted to mention something which I always harp on when runbooks come up: the best runbook is no runbook. They're necessary for some break-the-glass things, but if the answer to "would a runbook have helped here?" is "yes", then the immediate follow-up question should be "should it be automated?". If the answer is "yes" then build it into your system, with tests and everything, and if that's not feasible then write a script for it and check it into VCS somewhere.