The test is simple: what happens if your most experienced employee is signed off sick for three weeks tomorrow? If the answer gives you a knot in the stomach, operations are carried by people — not by systems. It isn’t only a risk in illness and resignations; it is also a daily bottleneck, because everything has to pass through the same few heads.
Certain tasks can only be done by one or two people
Holiday planning is a puzzle, and certain weeks are effectively closed
Training new people takes months and depends on side-by-side learning
Critical knowledge lives in heads, emails and private notes — not in standards
Experience built up over years has never been documented as standard work. Not out of reluctance — there has simply never been a routine that required it, or time set aside for it.
The only ones who can teach are those with the least time for it — precisely because everything has to pass through them. Without a deliberate decision, the circle never breaks itself.
Variants, exceptions and special agreements have arrived one at a time — and only the old hands can navigate them. The complexity is effectively undocumented business-critical infrastructure.
A simple competence matrix — tasks against people — immediately shows where there is only one bearer. Prioritise the tasks that are both critical and single-person-borne.
Short, visual standards written together with the key person, tested by having someone else follow them. A standard a new colleague can follow is the proof that the knowledge has moved.
Planned training against the competence matrix and deliberate rotation, so more people keep the knowledge alive. The goal is a minimum of two bearers on everything critical.
The operations check asks 8 questions and gives a concrete, preliminary diagnosis with a prioritised first step. Free, no sign-up, 4 minutes.