Moore IQAI automation for growing businesses
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Field guide

Get it out of their heads

Some of the knowledge that runs your business walks out the door every night. This guide covers why written procedures never get written, what works instead, and how to find your riskiest process before an absence finds it for you.

Free · about 7 minutes · no signup

Plan view of an operation in which six separate processes all converge on one person, with the point where a single absence cuts every one of them PLAN VIEW · SIX PROCESSES, ONE DEPENDENCY billing and money scheduling quoting intake compliance owner preferences absence one head no backup not written down the operation runs
Six unrelated processes, one person in the middle, no backup. If that person is out, all six stop on the same morning.

01The bus test

A maintenance coordinator with four years at a property management company put it in writing.

“None of these owner preferences are written down ANYWHERE. It is literally all in my head.”Maintenance coordinator, posted on Reddit

You probably just thought of a name. The person whose two weeks of vacation you quietly dread.

Another owner posted about the time it actually happened. A minor car accident kept them out for about three weeks. Their business partner found out nobody else knew how the money side worked. Vendors were not paid on time and invoices got lost.

Nobody hoards process on purpose. It piles up in heads because heads are where the work happens, and writing it down is always the least urgent task.

02Why the binder always fails

A closed loop in which a documentation week produces a wiki that goes stale, loses trust, stops being read and therefore never gets updated WHY THE BINDER DIES · A CLOSED LOOP a documentation week a wiki gets created eleven months stale nobody trusts it nobody reads it nobody updates it the loop closes
A loop that closes itself. The only way out is someone rewriting the wiki, which is the task nobody had time for in the first place.
Field note

Writing documentation is a second job, and the person who knows the process already has a first one. Any method that starts with “just write it down” depends on the exact people who never will. The fix is to change how knowledge gets captured so it costs the expert almost nothing.

03The five rules of getting it out of heads

R1

Record the explanation, do not ask for a document.

Ask your expert to explain the task out loud, like training a new hire, in a ten-minute voice note. A transcript and a good prompt turn that into numbered steps, decision points, the tools needed, and warnings. Where they skipped a step, the draft says [GAP: ask about this] instead of making something up.

Capture flow turning a ten minute voice note into a transcript, then a structured SOP draft with gap flags, which the expert only has to correct CAPTURE FLOW · AUTHOR TO EDITOR 1 expert talks out loud voice note, ten minutes ten minutes 2 transcript 3 structured SOP draft numbered steps if X, then step N tools listed up front failure points as warnings [GAP: ask about this] nothing invented 4 the expert corrects the gaps, nothing else editors finish 5 it lives next to the work
The expert only touches step 4. Every gap is flagged as a question, so the draft never invents a step the expert did not say.

The prompt for this is free: prompt 7 in 10 prompts that replace office busywork.

R2

Every “ask Sharon” is a risk.

When you map a process honestly, some steps come out as “ask Sharon, she knows.” Do not clean those up. Each one is a single point of failure with a name on it. Count them. That count is your real risk, and the order to record things in.

A mapped process where three of six steps resolve to a named person, each becoming a risk register entry, and the total forming the bus factor COUNT THE NAMES · THAT IS THE BUS FACTOR STEP RESOLVED BY step 01the system step 02the system step 03 ask Sharon step 04the system step 05 ask Dave step 06 ask Sharon RISKREGISTER entry entry entry count = your real bus factor
A step that resolves to a name is data. Count the names and you have your recording order.
R3

Rules belong in systems, not memories.

How each customer likes to be contacted, their spending limit, what upsets them: those should be fields on the customer record that the work reads. Then the rule holds for whoever is working that day.

The same rule on two paths: held in memory it is only recalled when the person is present, held as a field the workflow reads it every time ONE RULE, TWO PLACES TO KEEP IT MEMORY PATH the rule in a head recalled if present applied sometimes SYSTEM PATH the rule as a field the workflow reads it applied every time enforced for whoever is working that day
The same rule, stored in two places. Only one of them works when the person is out.
R4

Make what you have searchable, do not move it.

Often the knowledge is already written down, in folders nobody can search. Leave the files where the team works and add search on top, so people can ask a question and get an answer with the source attached.

R5

Run the drill on purpose.

Give your riskiest person a protected day off, no calls. Watch what stalls. Everything that stalls goes to the top of the recording list. Finding out on a planned Tuesday beats finding out during an accident.

04Find your riskiest process

List the processes you depend on. For each one, say who else could run it and whether it is written down. Two minutes.

Tool · bus factor

List the processes you want to check. Leave unused rows blank. Complete both choices for each process you enter.

The same six processes re-routed through a system layer, so the work continues with whoever is on shift while the expert is on vacation SAME SIX PROCESSES, RE-ROUTED billing and money scheduling quoting intake compliance owner preferences THE SYSTEM whoever is on shift the expert on vacation nothing stalls the rule lives in the record, not in the memory
The same six processes, routed through a system instead of one person. The person can take a vacation and nothing stalls.

This week, get one ten-minute voice note from the person at the top of your list. That is the whole first step.

Want the knowledge built into your systems?

Tell me the process at the top of your list. I will show you how to turn it into steps, fields and checks that work without that one person.

Talk it through with meOr run the free X-Ray