They know why month-end runs in that order and which report you never run on a Friday afternoon. They haven’t taken more than a week off in years, and everyone is quietly relieved about that.
They are not the problem. They’re usually the most loyal person in the building.
The problem is that very little of it is written down.
The business rules sit in code nobody reads. The workarounds sit in their head. The fix from that incident three years ago never made it into a document.
That’s a business risk.
And it doesn’t take much to turn it into a real problem: a resignation, a long illness or a family emergency will do.
Solving this is usually less dramatic than it sounds:
- Turn the rules into automated tests that run every time the system changes, not just a Word document nobody updates.
- Have someone shadow them on the next change, before the next crisis.
- Find the jobs that only happen because they remember to do them, and make the system do them instead.
None of this replaces them. It just means a holiday stops being a risk event.
If you are that person, this isn’t a criticism. You’re probably the one who would most like a proper holiday.
If your business depends on that one person, I’m happy to talk through how to make your systems less dependent on them.
