When the Best Employee Becomes the Biggest Risk
Every organization has employees who seem to have all the answers. But what happens when their knowledge becomes something nobody else can work without? Drawing on more than 40 years of management experience, Roger Campbell, Sr., explores how well-intentioned employees and managers can unintentionally create hidden dependencies and what leaders can do about them.
Roger Campbell Sr,
10/17/20265 min read
When the Best Employee Becomes the Biggest Risk
By Roger Campbell, Sr. | Founder, Over 60 Dam, LLC
Every organization has someone people turn to when things aren't going the way they're supposed to. It might be a supervisor, a purchasing manager, a technician, or someone who's been with the company long enough to remember why certain decisions were made.
When there's a problem, they know who to call. When a procedure doesn't work, they know another way. When somebody needs an answer, they're usually the person who has it.
Executives value these employees. And they should.
But I've learned something over the years that changed the way I look at them. Sometimes the employee we depend on most is also the person keeping us from seeing what's wrong with the operation.
A customer has a problem with the regular process can't resolve. Someone steps in, makes a phone call, and takes care of it. A supplier doesn't deliver what was promised. An experienced buyer knows who can get the material there by morning. A piece of equipment breaks down, and a longtime maintenance employee knows a workaround.
The problems are solved. From the executive's office, everything looks fine. But what happens when that employee takes a vacation, gets sick, accepts another position, or retires?
Suddenly, the organization discovers that the process everyone thought was working depended on one person's experience. The employee wasn't the problem. The dependency was.
When Knowledge Becomes Job Security
Over more than 40 years in management, I've seen another side of this problem that organizations don't always talk about.
I've worked with people who knew the shortcuts, the exceptions, and the people to call when something needed immediate attention. They had answers that weren't written down anywhere. And sometimes, they preferred to keep it that way.
Some enjoyed being the person everyone needed. They liked being the one who could solve a problem nobody else could. Others worried that if they shared everything they knew, the company might decide it no longer needed them.
I've seen this particularly in purchasing, but I've encountered it in financial services and other operations as well.
An experienced buyer might know which supplier can deliver overnight, who will make an exception to an agreement, or which contact can resolve a problem without several layers of approval. That knowledge can save the company time and money.
But if it stays in one person's head, the organization depends on that individual instead of building a process others can follow.
The employee may have an outstanding performance record. Management may consider that person indispensable. Meanwhile, the information that makes them so effective never reaches a process flowchart, a training manual, or a standard operating procedure.
I've learned that before you can expect people to share what they know, you have to understand why they may be holding on to it. Some want recognition for what they've contributed. Others need reassurance that teaching someone else doesn't diminish their own value.
When Good Intentions Create a Bigger Problem
I've seen this happen in operations nationally and internationally. In most cases, I don't believe the employee or the manager is intentionally doing anything wrong.
The employees believe they're helping the company. They're solving problems and making sure the work gets done. The manager sees someone who consistently comes through when things get difficult and recognizes that performance.
Everybody believes they're doing the right thing.
But every time the same person comes to the rescue, the organization can become a little more dependent on what that person knows. And every time management praises the result without asking how it was achieved, an opportunity to improve the operation gets missed.
We reward the person who knows how to fix something. We don't always ask whether anyone else knows how to fix it.
I'm not suggesting we stop recognizing outstanding employees. We should recognize their experience. But we should also recognize what they do to help others develop that same capability.
If an experienced buyer resolves a difficult supplier situation, what did they know that the rest of the purchasing team should know? If one supervisor repeatedly handles an exception nobody else understands, why hasn't the team learned how to handle it?
Those are management questions, not accusations against the employee.
How I Learned to Identify Dependency
When I noticed that one employee seemed to have most of the answers, particularly someone who didn't report directly to me, I usually started with their manager or department head.
I wanted to know why people kept turning to that individual. What did the person know that others didn't? Was that knowledge being documented? Were they holding debriefs after unusual situations, or were the answers disappearing as soon as the problem was solved?
If the manager agreed, I might bring that employee together with a couple of others from the department and talk through a real situation. I'd ask how they would handle it, whom they would contact, and what they'd do if the normal procedure didn't work.
Then I'd listen.
Who participated? Who had the answers? Who was uncertain? Did everyone understand the process, or was one person explaining everything?
Sometimes I'd give everyone the same five questions and ask them to write down their answers individually. If people doing similar work gave very different responses, I wanted to understand why.
Was the procedure unclear? Was the training incomplete? Or had one employee learned something important that nobody else had been taught?
That exercise wasn't a test to embarrass anyone. It was a way to see where the gaps were.
When the employee reported directly to me, the approach was much the same. Weekly operational debriefs were already part of how I managed, and I would also speak separately with the employee and their supervisor when appropriate.
The experienced employee needed to be part of the solution. Their knowledge was the very thing we wanted to protect. And the manager needed to be involved because sharing that knowledge had to become part of how the department operated.
You don't always need an expensive system to begin. Sometimes you need the right people in a room, a real example, and a few good questions.
What Leadership Needs to Change
Finding out where knowledge is concentrated is only the beginning. The next question is what leadership does about it.
If someone develops a better way to handle a customer problem, I want others to learn it. If an experienced buyer knows how to resolve a difficult supplier issue, I want that knowledge shared with the purchasing team.
That doesn't mean writing a new procedure for every exception. It means making knowledge-sharing a normal part of the work.
Weekly debriefs, cross-training, and conversations about unusual situations can make a difference. Managers also need to think about what they recognize when they evaluate performance.
Of course we should appreciate the employee who saves the day. But what about the employee who teaches three coworkers how to handle that same problem, so the next time it happens nobody has to come looking for them?
That contribution deserves recognition too.
An experienced employee shouldn't have to worry that sharing what they know makes them less valuable. Leadership needs to show, through its actions, that developing others is part of doing a good job.
After more than 40 years managing operations, I've come to believe that one way to judge the strength of a department is to see what happens when its most experienced person isn't there.
Does the work continue? Can other employees make sound decisions? Do they know what to do when the written procedure doesn't cover the situation?
Or does everyone wait for that one person to return?
The best employee may be one of the organization's greatest assets. But when everything depends on that employee being available, the organization has a problem that deserves leadership's attention.
The question isn't whether you have exceptional employees. It's whether you've built an organization that can benefit from their experience even when they're not in the room.
Roger Campbell, Sr., has spent more than 40 years managing people and operations nationally and internationally. He is the founder of Over 60 Dam, LLC and the Experience Advantage Program, which helps organizations identify and preserve the institutional knowledge, judgment, and relationships concentrated in experienced employees.
Learn more at www.over60dam.net.