The last time I used my go-to, standard
illustration about the need for documentation and cross training I was
doing a series of custom workshops for a medical management team.
“What if, heaven forbid,” I asked them, “one
of you got hit by a bus tomorrow and didn’t come to work? How much would it
cost the business?''
Usually when I deliver that line
I see awareness dawning and heads nodding as the implications sink
in, but that morning the faces staring back at me wore expressions of horror
and even anger.
I soon learned that only a few months before
I was hired to revamp their systems and coach individuals on the team, their
office manager and her father had been killed in a car accident. This wasn’t a
theoretical illustration for this audience. They’d lived it.
More than that, they were a classic example
of the real “weakest link” in any small business. With their office manager
gone they started to discover all the tasks they took for granted in the course
of a day that no one else knew how to do.
When I ask business owners and managers to
identify their weakest link most of them will start a mental inventory of their
team’s attitude and skills. But in almost every case the weakest link isn’t the
slacker, or the prima donna or the dim bulb who is costing the business the
most. Even without a tragic wake-up call, the weakest link is nearly always the
person who knows how to do things no one else in the business can do. If that
link breaks, even for a sick day or short vacation, it costs your business in
small, but cumulative ways that you might not even notice. If they are able, or
unwilling, to return to work those costs will accumulate fast.
The entrepreneur at a small
business with only one or two employees typically has done most of
the employees' tasks at some time and could still muddle through them, if
necessary. But think of the cost of having what should be your most highly
skilled (and compensated) person (that would be you) doing mundane but vital
tasks. As you grow there will be tasks that you’ve hired someone to do
just so you don’t ever have to know how to do them. That’s great, but make
documentation and training part of the job description.
If you have employees who are highly
specialized, documentation is even more essential because it’s unlikely that
their knowledge and skills are duplicated in the organization. Who hasn’t heard
the horror stories of the tech start up whose engineer quit and left only
sloppy records of their work on the project?
If you have one trusted “right hand” person
who is the only one who knows everything from the password to your online
banking to where the bodies are buried, your weakest link is also enough rope
for you to hang yourself with if that one trusted right hand turns out not to
be trustworthy.
Regardless of the type of business you’re in,
how large or how small, a Key Person Audit is a smart item to add to your 2016
planning agenda. Identify the weak links and create a plan for documentation,
cross-training where appropriate, and even a hiring strategy if you should need
to replace a key person in your organization.
I hope you never lose an
employee to tragedy, or to a betrayal of trust, but life has a way of throwing
us curve balls. The old parental standby is a good admonition for entrepreneurs
as well. “Better safe than sorry” is a wise approach to evaluating and guarding
against the day when your go-to person isn’t there to go to.
Written
by: Dixie Gillaspie
Credit:
entrepreneur.com
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