Our processes only work because one person knows them
You are not alone, and it is rarely anyone's fault. In most SMEs the processes grew around the people who built them: they know the exceptions, the customers and the shortcuts, so the work runs through them. The real cause is not a lack of documentation. It is that the knowledge was never captured in a form others can use — and while the business was growing, nobody had the time.
Do you recognise these signs?
- the work slows down or stops when one person is on holiday;
- colleagues answer questions with a name instead of an answer;
- that person gets called on days off;
- nobody else can explain why a process runs the way it does;
- new colleagues shadow that person for months;
- a retirement or departure is on the horizon, with no plan for what they know.
Why does it happen?
Knowledge concentrates on its own. The person who solves a problem once is asked the next time, and the time after that. Being the one who knows is also a form of recognition, so nobody is in a hurry to change it.
Writing it down does not happen, for a simple reason: much of what an experienced person knows is tacit knowledge — they apply it without thinking, and find it hard to explain on a blank page.
What does it cost?
Growth stalls at that person's capacity: quotes, decisions and difficult cases wait for them, and their own work suffers from the constant questions.
The larger cost is the risk. An illness, a resignation or a retirement turns a bottleneck into a gap — and in a succession or a sale, it lowers what the company is worth to someone else.
The first step, this month
Pick the one process that stops first when this person is away. Sit down with them for an hour and walk through the last real case, step by step. Write down every decision they made, and why.
You now have the first piece of captured knowledge, and a realistic picture of how much more there is. Identifying your concentration risk takes it further.
How MentX helps
MentX captures how your company really works: the knowledge of your key people and the processes they run. We offer both a hands-on service approach — mapping your processes and capturing the knowledge behind them, from meetings, workshops and a guided intake — and our own personality-aware knowledge base, with full source attribution, in your own Knowledge Space. We build on the tools you already use and add best-practice solutions where they fit.
We start where the risk is: capture the knowledge of that person, or map the process with the team — and give it an owner and a back-up, so the process no longer depends on one head.
A question we often hear
Isn't this just normal for a company our size?
It is common, and for a long time it works. It becomes a problem when the company grows faster than that person can answer, or when their departure comes into view. The point is not to make anyone less important — it is to make sure the company keeps what they know, and that they can take a holiday without their phone.
