Fragile Empires Built on Brenda’s Brain
The Smell of Failing Systems
The air in the breakroom tasted like 49-cent grocery store cupcakes and a weird, underlying metallic tang from the failing HVAC unit. It was 3:59 PM on a Friday, and Brenda was laughing. She’d been with the firm for 29 years, and her retirement cake-decorated with a slightly lopsided frosting depiction of a ledger-was being sliced into 19 uneven pieces. We all cheered. We gave her a gold-plated watch that probably cost $199 and a card signed by 49 people, most of whom barely knew her but knew that when a specialized invoice went sideways, Brenda was the only person who could fix it.
I’m writing this while my face is still hot from a different kind of exposure. Ten minutes ago, I accidentally joined a high-level strategy call with my camera on while I was leaning back in my chair, trying to fish a rogue grape out of my keyboard with a paperclip. That feeling-the sudden, jarring realization that you are being seen in a state you weren’t prepared to reveal-is exactly what happened to our CEO the following Monday morning. Because on Monday, Brenda wasn’t there. And neither was the logic for the 9-step client reconciliation process that kept our largest account from hemorrhaging money.
The Great Institutional Amnesia
This is the Great Institutional Amnesia. We hire brilliant people, we pay them $129,000 a year, and then we allow them to build elaborate, beautiful cathedrals of process entirely inside their own skulls. We don’t do this because we’re stupid. We do it because we’re busy. We do it because documenting a process feels like homework, and nobody wants to do homework when there are 39 unread emails screaming for attention.
But the cost of this neglect is a hidden tax that eventually comes due, usually with a 29% interest rate compounded by panic.
Man-Hours Spent
Seconds Required
On that Monday after Brenda left, a Tier-1 client called. They had a discrepancy in their regional factoring fees-a complex, multi-layered issue involving three different currencies and a legacy discount structure that dated back to 1999. Without her, four of our senior analysts spent 49 man-hours staring at the same screen. They found notes in the system, sure. But the notes said things like ‘Check with B.’ or ‘Adjust per usual.’ The ‘usual’ had walked out the door with a gold watch and a newfound interest in water aerobics.
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We eventually had to call Brenda at her home. She was nice about it, but the sheer embarrassment of having to admit that our entire operational integrity rested on one woman’s memory was more painful than my camera-on incident.
The Ego of Expertise
This is where we fail as architects of organizations. We build structures that are person-dependent rather than process-driven. We mistake ‘expertise’ for ‘job security,’ when in reality, if your expertise cannot be translated into a repeatable system, you aren’t an expert; you’re a single point of failure. It’s a harsh thing to say, and I say it knowing I’ve been that single point of failure at least 19 times in my career.
The Hero Complex is Toxic Fuel
I like being the hero. I like being the one people come to when everything is on fire. It feeds the ego. But it’s a toxic kind of fuel. Wei L.-A. once told me that the most dangerous chemicals aren’t the ones labeled ‘poison.’ They’re the ones that are stable for 29 years and then suddenly become volatile when the temperature shifts by half a degree.
Knowledge silos are the same way. They look like stability. They look like ‘the person who knows everything.’ But they are actually high-explosive risks waiting for a retirement party or a better job offer to act as a detonator.
The Ghost Town of Internal Manuals
9 Years Ago
Software Protocol Abandoned
Today
Fossilized Manuals ($599,999 wasted effort)
The Self-Sabotaging Expert
People fear that if they write down everything they know, they become replaceable. They think the mystery of their work is what gives them value. I used to think that too. But then I realized that the more I systematized my mundane tasks, the more space I had to do the high-level thinking that actually gets me noticed.
By refusing to document, you aren’t making yourself indispensable; you’re just making yourself a bottleneck. You become the person who can’t take a vacation because the world will end. That’s not a career; it’s a hostage situation where you are both the kidnapper and the victim.
The Revenue Vanishing Test
If they all left tomorrow…
If the answer to this stress test is anything more than ‘negligible,’ you aren’t running a company; you’re babysitting a series of individual miracles.
We need to turn the ‘voodoo’ into a workflow. This is why tools like factoring software are becoming the backbone of resilient firms. They don’t just track the ‘what’ of a transaction; they provide the framework for the ‘how’ and the ‘why,’ ensuring that when your top talent decides to go trek through the Himalayas, your business doesn’t develop a sudden case of total cognitive collapse.
Turning Voodoo into Workflow
I’m going to go turn my camera off now, literally and metaphorically. I’m going to start writing down the ‘voodoo’ I do every day before I become the next Brenda. I’m going to make sure that the next time I’m exposed, it’s because I’m doing something brave, not because I’m the only one who knows where the digital bodies are buried.
How much of your company is currently stored in a brain that is planning to go to Spain for three weeks this summer?
[the silence of a lost process is the loudest sound in an office]
