The Person Everyone Asks Is Also Your Biggest Risk

Prompted by “1 Smart Employee Does All the Troubleshooting for My Team. How Do I Change This?”, Inc. (Minda Zetlin).

Every team has someone who solves what nobody else can. It feels like a strength until that person is out sick, on vacation, or hired away.

Inc.'s Minda Zetlin answers a manager who inherited a team built around one long-tenured problem-solver. Asking him was always faster than learning the answer, so nobody learned.

Her fix has four moves:

• Talk to him first. Being the only one who knows gives him security, so tell him what he's worth and where he fits in the future before you change anything.
• Don't make him write the manual. What he knows is instinct by now, so he explains it badly. Assign a colleague to shadow him and document what they learn. That rewards the colleague instead of piling work on him.
• Let him advise but not touch. He guides while others do the hands-on fixing. One person in his shoes says it's helping a lot.
• If troubleshooting is really a job, make it one, with a job description, so you know what you'd be replacing.

Are you the leader everyone comes to?

Whether you're a CEO or an owner-operator, in a small or medium-sized business that person is often you. Everyone asks you because it's faster, and nobody has standing to tell you the business depends on you. Moves two and three apply to you. You can't write the manual either, because it's instinct to you too. Pick who shadows you.

Test it out: this week, when someone brings you a problem they could solve, don't fix it. Ask them to walk you through their approach, and keep your hands off. Count how many times you're tempted to jump in. That number shows how dependent the business is on you.

Looking for a place to discuss issues like this with other local business leaders? Join one of our no-cost Rochester CEO insight sessions and test your ideas with your peers.

Originally posted on LinkedIn ↗