Every business has one. The person everyone goes to when a customer asks for something unusual, a machine plays up or a job does not go to plan. They have been there for years. They know the shortcuts, the workarounds and all the little things that were never written down.
Often, they are also the person you are thinking of promoting next. And that is when the question becomes real: if they step up, step away or simply book two weeks in the sun, what goes with them? Holding the knowledge feels safe. It rarely is.
The Knowledge Nobody Wrote Down
It is rarely the big things that get missed. It is knowing why a process works the way it does, which customer needs a phone call rather than an email, and what to check first when something goes wrong.
That sort of knowledge comes from years of experience. You cannot put it in a manual and expect someone to pick it up. It has to be taught, and that is where most businesses get stuck. The CIPD's factsheet on succession planning makes the wider point: organisations need to plan for how critical roles and capabilities will be covered, rather than hoping the right person is always available.
From the Training Room
On our Train the Trainer course, every delegate brings a real task from their own job and teaches it to the group. It is one of the most revealing parts of the day.
Experienced people who could do the task with their eyes closed suddenly find they skip steps, use jargon or explain things the way they would want to hear them. They have forgotten what it was like not to know.
The fix is simpler than most expect. Break the task into clear steps. Set an objective you can check. Ask the learner to show it back before moving on. When a delegate from an engineering consultancy was asked what was most useful, he pointed to exactly that: structuring training with a clear beginning, middle and end, and understanding the different ways people learn.
Your experts do not need to become professional trainers. They just need a way to pass on what they know, and many of the same habits sit at the heart of coaching others to perform.
A Quick Win: Find Your Single Points of Failure
- Identify. Who does everyone rely on for specialist knowledge?
- Ask. If they were unavailable for a month, what would the team struggle with?
- Act. Pick one important task and have that person teach it to a colleague. Then ask the colleague to demonstrate it back while the expert gives feedback.
The teach-back is where you will find the gaps. Whatever the colleague cannot show you is what still lives only in the expert's head.
Why This Matters Before a Promotion
When you promote someone who holds a lot of the know-how, the knowledge problem and the leadership problem arrive together. New starters pick up bad habits by shadowing, inductions run on autopilot and the newly promoted manager stays pulled back into the detail because nobody else can do it. Equipping them to teach the job first makes the move into leadership far smoother, and New & Aspiring Leaders then helps them build the people side of the role.
Final Thought
Your most experienced people are valuable for what they know. They become far more valuable when that knowledge lives in the whole team, not just in one head. So the question is not only how you keep your best people. It is how you make sure their knowledge stays with the business, even when they do not. Train the Trainer gives supervisors, team leaders and technical experts a simple, practical way to plan, deliver and check on-the-job training.
