Tribal knowledge in a small business: how to get it out of your best person's head

If your most experienced person didn't come in tomorrow, what would walk out with them?

Take a second with that one. Not the job title. The actual know-how. Which supplier to call when the usual one is out. Which customer wants a text and never a phone call. The three things to check on that one machine before you start it. The reason you stopped doing it the obvious way back in 2019.

None of it is written down anywhere. It lives in one person's head, and it is usually right.

What it is, in one paragraph

The know-how a business runs on that exists only in people's heads. Nobody wrote it down. It gets passed on by watching, asking, and getting it wrong once. It's normally accurate, because it came from doing the job rather than from describing the job. And it stays invisible until the person holding it is on vacation, on another site, or gone.

A word on the term itself, because it comes up. Some people find it dated and some teams dislike it. Institutional knowledge works. So does undocumented know-how, or just "what's in people's heads", which is the phrase your crew will actually use.

The rest of this page says know-how, because that's what I'd say out loud.

The ten-minute test

Four questions, on paper, by yourself. No meeting, and nobody else needs to know you're doing it.

1. Who's the one person you'd phone on a Sunday? Write the name. That's where this starts.
2. What do they do that nobody else has ever done? Not what's in their job description. What they actually do.
3. If two people do the same job, do they do it the same way? If the answer is no, and nobody can say which way is right, that's the same gap wearing a different hat.
4. Where does the information physically live? A notebook in a van. A spreadsheet on one laptop. Their phone. Their memory.

Ten minutes on that and you will have two or three names and a short list of jobs. That list is the entire project. Everything after this is just doing it.

The ten-minute test, on paper

1. Who's the one person you'd phone on a Sunday?

   Write the name. That's where to start.

2. What do they do that nobody else has ever done?

   Not what's in their job description. What they actually do.

3. If two people do the same job, do they do it the same way?

   If no, and nobody can say which is right, that's a gap wearing a different hat.

4. Where does the information physically live?

   A notebook in a van. A spreadsheet on one laptop. Their phone. Their memory.

Here's what it looks like in a few different buildings, and these are illustrations rather than accounts of work we've done.

A plumbing company. The senior tech knows which apartment blocks on your books have the shutoff behind a locked panel. He also knows which building manager actually picks up. A new tech finds out by losing ninety minutes.

A machine shop. One machinist knows the fixture on the second op has to be snugged in a particular order or the part walks. It isn't on the drawing. It isn't in the setup sheet. It's in his hands.

A law firm or an accounting practice. The paralegal who has always run this client's filings knows which forms that particular clerk's office sends back, and why. The lawyer knows the client. The paralegal knows the county.

A dental practice. The front desk person knows which patients need two reminders and which ones take offense at the second one.

None of those people are hiding anything. Nobody ever asked them to write it down, and there was never an hour in the week to do it in.

What to write down first

Not everything. That's the mistake that kills this in week two.

Five things are worth the hour, in this order:

1. Jobs only one person does. This is the whole reason you're here.
2. Jobs two people do differently. Pick the right way, write that one down, and you've standardized something for free.
3. Anything a customer, an inspector or a regulator notices. The cost of getting it wrong is somebody else's bad day.
4. Whatever you learned from a failure. The expensive lesson, the recall, the callback. That one lives in one person's memory and leaves with their job change.
5. Where things are kept. Logins, keys, the supplier's direct number, the folder on the shared drive nobody can find.

Everything else can stay in people's heads, probably forever. You aren't building an encyclopedia and nobody is grading you on coverage. You're making sure that four or five specific things can survive a resignation, and the honest version of success here is a thin folder that is actually true rather than a thick one that was true in March.

What to write down first

Worth the hour

• Jobs only one person does

  This is the whole reason you're here.

• Jobs two people do differently

  Pick the right way, write that one down, and you've standardized something for free.

• Anything a customer, an inspector or a regulator notices

  The cost of getting it wrong is somebody else's bad day.

• Whatever you learned from a failure

  The expensive lesson, the recall, the callback.

• Where things are kept

  Logins, keys, the supplier's direct number, the folder on the shared drive nobody can find.

Everything else

• Stays in people's heads, probably forever.

The lineNot an encyclopedia. Capture what a resignation would take with it.

Three ways to get it out

Same three routes as any other job like this, and the right one depends on whether you have more time or more money.

Name a second person and have them shadow it

Cheapest, slowest, and it works. Pick one job off your list and name a second person for it. They watch it done twice. Then they do it while the first person watches with their hands in their pockets, which is harder for the first person than it sounds.

The watching is the easy half. What makes it stick is the second person writing the steps in their own words as they learn, because the gaps they hit are the gaps a new hire would hit.

Teaching from a written page is the version of this that scales past one person.

Sit down and write it yourself

One hour with the expert, one job, a notepad or a voice recorder.

1. Ask them to start one step earlier than the job does"What happens right before this begins?" The trigger is the step everybody forgets, and it's the one a new person gets wrong first.
2. Write while they talk and do not tidy anythingTidying while they talk makes you stop listening. You will also smooth out the odd detail that turns out to be the whole point.
3. Ask the five questionsWhat do you check first, and why that one? What goes wrong, and what do you do then? What would a new person get wrong here? What have you stopped doing, and why?
4. Read it back to them before you leave the roomOut loud, in order. They will interrupt you three or four times, and those interruptions are the most valuable part of the hour.

That fourth question, what have you stopped doing and why, is the one that gets you the 2019 answer. It is routinely the most valuable sentence in the hour and no checklist ever asks it.

Then turn the notes into a procedure anybody can follow. The prompt and the five-step check for that take an afternoon and cost nothing.

Have somebody from outside do it

Sometimes the owner is the expert, and you can't interview yourself. Sometimes everybody who knows the job is flat out and the hour never happens. That's when it's worth paying somebody.

So that's the job when we do the work on this. A person comes in, sits with whoever knows, and asks until the job is on paper. Then somebody who doesn't do that job tries to follow what we wrote. We fix whatever they tripped over and hand it back with a date and a name on it.

Two reasons an outsider gets more out of your expert than you will, and neither one flatters consultants.

We don't know your job. So we have to ask the obvious questions, and those are exactly the ones that get skipped when the person holding the notepad already knows the answer. You'd write "check the fixture" and your machinist would nod, and the step that actually matters would never reach the page.

We're not their boss. People talk differently to somebody who can't change their hours. An expert explaining a workaround to the owner is also explaining why they've done it that way for four years. Explaining it to an outsider is just explaining it.

The full list of what to own at the end of any outside help applies here the same as anywhere else.

What we can't do is the cross-training. Somebody has to actually do the job twice with the first person watching, and that part is yours. We also can't make a reluctant expert willing, and there's more on that below.

And the unflattering version of the pitch. If you have the hour and your expert is up for it, do it yourself. It is an hour and a notepad and it needs nobody's permission. Call us when the hour genuinely isn't there, or when you're the one who knows and can't interview yourself.

Three ways to get it out of their head

The three routes compared on what they cost, leave and cannot do.

The question	Shadow a second person	Write it yourself	Somebody from outside
Who spends the hour	Your second person	You	Us
What you end up with	A trained pair of hands	A written page	A written page already tested on somebody
What it cannot give you	Nothing written down	Nothing, if the hour never happens	The cross-training, which stays yours
Pick this when	You have time and two willing people	You have the hour	You are the expert, or the hour never happens

Hand it to someone else

Written down isn't captured. There's one test and it takes twenty minutes.

The handover test

• Give the page to somebody who does not do that job.
• Say nothing while they try, including when they look at you.
• Mark every place they stop, because each one is a missing step.
• Write down every question they ask, because each one is a line you thought was obvious.

The silence is the hard part and it is the whole test. The moment you help, you have tested yourself instead of the page.

Then three small things that take two minutes between them. Put a date on it. Put the name of the person who owns it, a real person and not a department. And pick a trigger for the next look, like a new supplier or the second time somebody says the page is wrong.

A page with no name on it belongs to nobody, and a step with no owner is a suggestion.

So the name is not administrative tidiness. It is the difference between a document and a thing somebody will correct in April when it stops being true.

The only test that counts

1. Needs a person

   Hand it to an outsider

   Somebody who does not do the job, to follow the page.

2. Needs a person

   Say nothing while they try

3. Recorded

   Every stop is a missing step

   And every question is a line you thought was obvious.

4. Affirmed

   A date, an owner, a trigger

   The owner is a real person, not a department.

• Needs a person
• Recorded
• Affirmed

When this goes wrong

Four ways, honestly.

Nobody owns the page. It was accurate the day it was written and it's wrong by spring. Fixable, and it's the reason for the name and the date.

The expert thinks it's about replacing them. Ask why before you push. It's a straight conversation for the owner to have rather than a process problem to solve. Make them the author of the page instead of the subject of it and the answer often changes, because their name then goes on something they wrote.

You tried to capture everything. Forty jobs, a big document, nobody reads it. Five things, five pages, in the van and on the wall.

The capture happened too late. We won't take this engagement during somebody's notice period, and that's a rule rather than a preference. An hour with a person who has already decided to go gets you their account of the job, which is a different thing from the job: resentment edits, and so does the wish to be remembered as indispensable. You cannot tell which sentences got edited, and you will be building on them for years. So do this while people are staying, and if you have left it too late, accept that you are getting a sketch and have the second person rebuild it from the work rather than from the page.

Could you answer that first question?

Go back to the one at the top. If your most experienced person didn't come in tomorrow, how much of what they do could somebody else follow from a page?

Not from memory, and not by calling them on vacation. From a page.

That exact question is one of twenty in the free AI readiness check, and it's the one owners hesitate on longest. The check takes about four minutes, one tap per question, and your finding plus all five areas land on screen the moment you finish. Two of the five are whether the work is written down and where the information lives, which is this whole article measured instead of described.

It matters beyond a resignation too. A tool can only follow a process you can describe, so written down is the gate before you automate or buy anything. Skip it and you're paying somebody to guess at your business.

Who should actually do this

You, this week, for one job. An hour and a notepad, and it needs nobody's permission.

If the hour never happens, that's what we're for. We train a second person on the jobs only one person can do. We build the written procedures and the one place they live, owned by somebody inside your business. Or we do the work and hand it over.

We sell time, method and training. Nobody sells you your own know-how, and anybody offering to store it before you've captured it has the order backwards.

If you run trucks, the trade version of all this starts with the dispatch rules in your dispatcher's head. Same problem with a steering wheel attached.