Name the person in your business who cannot be replaced this month.
It is usually not the most senior one. It is the man who knows which party accepts which quality, or the woman who knows what the rate was last year and why it was different for that customer, or the one who knows the machine makes a noise before it stops.
None of that is written anywhere. It is twelve years of paying attention, and it leaves the building every evening at seven.
How this quietly becomes a risk
Nobody decides to depend on one person. It happens because that person is good, so more things get given to them, and because they are reliable, nobody checks what would happen without them.
Then one day there is a wedding, or an illness, or a better offer from somebody else. And the business discovers in a single week how much was sitting in one head.
The worst part is that the person themselves usually does not know either. Ask them what they do and they will describe their job in four sentences. The hundred small judgements are invisible even to the one making them.
What actually reduces it
Not a handover document written in a hurry when somebody resigns. That is too late and it is always thin.
Sit with them for an hour and ask about the exceptions. Which customer is handled differently and why. What do you check before you release that order. When do you not follow the normal rule.
The exceptions are the knowledge. The normal rule is the easy part and anybody can learn it.
Write those down, and put them where the work happens rather than in a file nobody opens. Then the business owns them, and the person is still valuable without being irreplaceable, which is better for them too.
Think of your one person. If they were away for a month, what would nobody else know how to decide?
Getting that knowledge out of one head and into the place the work happens is a job we have done many times. Tell us who your one person is and we will show you where to start.
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