Another knowledge-loss challenge

Dear Bob …

Our first round of layoffs is over. The good news is, we survived it. The bad news is, we used up most of our “knowledge redundancy” in the process.

I’d been careful to make sure at least two people knew everything important, just in case. I also made sure we documented the most important processes and procedures. Just like we’re supposed to do.

With the layoff (15% of the staff left) there’s a lot of critical knowledge in just one head, as it were, and with everyone who’s left having to cover more ground than they used to cover, nobody has any time let to keep the documentation up to date.

I’m not complaining about the decision. Like every other company, business is way down. We’re trying to break even with expenses this year, and the only way to do it was serious cost cutting, including staff reductions.

Knowing it was necessary doesn’t help all that much here in the trenches where the work happens.

We’re okay for the moment, but if a couple of key people leave, we’re in serious trouble.

What do you suggest?

– Stabilized, but still in intensive care

Dear Stabilized …

First comes the big abstraction.

In any for-profit business there are three big “goods” — revenue increase, cost reduction, and risk management. Everything else is just technique.

One way of characterizing your situation is that in response to reduced revenue the company decided to trade cost for risk. Fair enough, so long as it’s a conscious decision.

Now for the specifics: Your first stop is the executive suite, where you make the increase in risk, and its consequences, clear to your peers … not to complain but to offer a choice: (1) You can continue to provide as much service as they’re accustomed to, but with more risk than the company is used to accepting; or (2) you can get the risks under control, but you’ll be delivering less service than they are accustomed to receiving.

The decision could go either way. Here on Earth, option #1 will undoubtedly prevail, because given a choice between the certainty of pain now and the possibility of pain later, most of humanity will go with the possibility of pain later, even if it’s a lot of pain.

That’s okay. Your goal was to make it a conscious choice. Since the company chose risk, you now do what you’re supposed to do with an identified risk: Create a contingency plan. It doesn’t have to be lengthy or comprehensive. Just provide the categories of risk and propose courses of action should they turn into reality. Course of action like hire temporary staff and deal with the loss of effectiveness as they come up to speed; live without a key application that’s down while remaining staff figure it out and so on.

Finally … this isn’t good enough, of course, because no executive suite agreement survives the first crisis whose resolution depends on ignoring it.

Work with your management team to assign work in a way that gives the remaining employees a chance to cross-train each other. If doing so slows down delivery a bit, so be it. Headcount is down 15% already, and you’re allowing time for cross-training too. If this means deliveries end up 25% later than everyone is accustomed to, it isn’t as if project slippage is a new phenomenon in IT.

And besides, you’ve already prepared everying to expect delivery to be 15% later than usual because of the cuts themselves.

Haven’t you?

– Bob