When the person who knows everything leaves

Ask two questions of every recurring task. Who does it, and who else could tomorrow without asking anyone? Most firms find between six and fifteen answers they do not like.

The person who cannot be away

Most advisory firms have someone whose absence stops the work. Sometimes it is the principal. Frequently it is an operations person who has been there nine years and knows where everything is.

That is not loyalty or luck. It is an unrecorded process, and the firm is exposed to it whether or not anyone has said so out loud.

Find out how exposed you are

Ask two questions of every recurring task at your firm. Who does it? And who else could, tomorrow, without asking anyone?

Any task with only one answer to the second question is a single point of failure. Most firms discover they have between six and fifteen.

Handover is a document, not a conversation

The instinct when someone leaves is to sit them down with their replacement for two days. It does not work. Nobody retains a nine-year job in two days, and the leaver forgets to mention the things they do automatically — which are exactly the things that break.

What works is a written checklist per recurring task, produced by the person who does the work rather than by the principal. The practitioner's version includes the workaround nobody else knows about.

The gap between how a process is supposed to work and how it actually works is the entire content of a good handover.

Do it before you need it

The worst time to document a role is during a notice period, when the person has already left emotionally and has a new job to prepare for. The best time is an ordinary Tuesday when nobody is going anywhere.

One task a week, written by whoever performs it. In a quarter you have the firm's operating manual, and you did not spend a single stressful hour on it.

What to capture that people forget

Logins and where they live — in a password manager, not a person's memory or a document.
Which vendors renew when, and who signs.
Client quirks: who prefers post, who must be called before a trade, who is not to be emailed at work.
The exceptions. Every negotiated fee, every restriction, every arrangement that differs from the default.
What to do when the thing fails — who to call at the custodian, at the platform, at the firm's technology support.

The commercial reason, if the operational one is not enough

A buyer pays for a business that runs. A firm that depends on two irreplaceable people is a job with clients attached, and it prices accordingly.

What a buyer is actually pricing →

Questions this did not answer? Ask them directly — that is what the twenty minutes is for.

Schedule a call to see for yourself

The person who cannot be away.