In your business, you have certain people that know certain things. Claire in accounting and Susan in customer support both have great filing systems, but they are different from each other. All of your employees have information in nested folders on their computers, stacks of paper on their desks and a lot of information in their heads.

Your employees know sensitive information about each of your customers and all the quirks and nuances of making sure that your customers are taken care of. In addition, they know how to do their job… scratch that, they are the only people that know how to do their jobs.

How many key people do you have in organization that are irreplaceable because of the information that only they have?

Usually it is the key positions in a company that fall victim to this. Accountants, IT Support, Customer Support and Sales. These are key people in your organization. They build kingdoms so they can’t be replaced. They want leverage and power… whether they realize that is what they are doing or not.

The answer?

Document everything. Every process and every job should have a defined expectation, role and responsibility. You should be able to hand a manual to someone brand new that has the basic skill set and at the end of the day, they should be ready to pick up where someone else left off. Maybe they will be slow at first, but at least they won’t be in the dark.

If you don’t, then when someone leaves, you will struggle for weeks trying to get out of the mess you are in.

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Corey Smith is the Vice President of Innovation at Fisher’s Document Systems where he maintains a blog on business and technology.

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