Why all the documentation, procedures and work instructions?

Allow me to ask you a simple question. “Would your know-how survive  if a  few key employees  left your company?”

Why don`t you take up this challenge and evaluate the situation  in your own organization. To what extent does the knowledge and know-how in your organization depend on (certain) people?

By way of example:

For  the past thirty-five years, Mark has worked  in  the metal  industry at company X. He  is a seasoned  veteran  who  knows  all  the  tricks and  tweaks.  He  can  practically  operate  the machines  blindfolded. Working  at  his  lathe  for  so  many  years, Mark  has  seen  numerous colleagues  come and go. And it was always Mark  that  trained and  took  care of  the  young apprentices. But one day, Mark didn’t show up for work. He had a serious accident and was in a  deep  coma.  Only  now  did  the  manager  realize  how  important  Mark’s  knowledge  and experience were  to  the  company.

He  had mistakenly  assumed  that Mark would  always  be around  to  fix  everything  and  keep  it  all working.  If  only  he’d  asked Mark  to write  all  that knowledge down.  If only he had detailed  instructions and procedures  that clearly explained how to do this or that. But now it’s too late…

An  over-exaggerated  disaster  scenario,  you  might  think.  Blown  out  of  proportion?  Not  really. Organizations today are full of “Marks” walking around with  important bits of corporate knowledge stored away in their brains.  KNOWLEDGE  =  POWER.  It’s  important  that  the  knowledge  present  in  our  organizations  is documented and protected. It’s the only way to ensure the continuity of our organizations.  So write down procedures detailing the various steps of each process where necessary. But don’t get carried away. Thick books full of complex and almost unintelligible procedures will not get used very often. Furthermore they’re very difficult to keep up to date.

So where should you begin?

It’s  a  good  idea  to  start  by  describing  a  few  processes  that  are  critical  to  the  overall  production process or where basic or general knowledge is not good enough.