6 January 2025
It is not uncommon for managers to find themselves held hostage by individuals who are supposedly irreplaceable in the company. These are usually long-standing employees who have meticulously and diligently built up extensive detailed knowledge. There is nothing wrong with that in principle.
Instead of sharing or documenting their knowledge, however, they defend it like a sacred treasure. They successfully resist every instruction to create transparency. Either there is too much to do and the whole thing would collapse if they did not constantly sacrifice themselves for the company, or those around them lack the genius to understand their explanations. “Nobody can expect someone to absorb knowledge that has been built up over decades in such a short time,” is a sentence that is often heard in this context.
It becomes problematic for managers when irreplaceable knowledge carriers start to pursue their own agenda. But even if this is not the case, they often prevent the development of the team as a whole. If there is always someone who knows everything better, and every effort and every idea is laughed at, then there is no motivation for employees to really get involved.
In principle, a single person can never outweigh an entire team. If that is currently the case, then there is an urgent need for action by the team leadership. Free your organization of such irreplaceable knowledge carriers. The time for such a measure is never right. There is also no doubt that isolating such employees initially comes at a price. But in the long term, you will increase the efficiency of your teams.
Make the slogan “irreplaceability will not be tolerated” part of your corporate culture. It will pay off.