One thing years in operations have taught me is that a process can appear to be working while actually being completely dependent on one person.
The work gets completed. Deadlines are met. Problems are solved. Everyone feels that the system is functioning.
But then that person goes on leave, moves to another role, resigns, or simply becomes unavailable.
Suddenly, everything starts slowing down.
Questions that should have had clear answers start appearing:
Who is responsible for this?
What is the next step?
Where is the information?
What was agreed earlier?
Who needs to follow up?
Why wasn't this documented?
This is where an important distinction becomes visible.
A person making a process work is not the same as a process being capable of working.
The hidden dependency
In many organisations, particularly as teams grow, certain individuals gradually become the "person who knows."
They know whom to call.
They remember what happened last time.
They know which vendor responds quickly.
They know which approval usually takes longer.
They know where an old document is stored.
They know what needs to be pushed and when.
Their experience is extremely valuable.
But if all of that knowledge exists only with the individual, the organisation has created a dependency rather than a system.
The person may be highly capable.
The process may still be weak.
Good operations should reduce unnecessary dependency
This does not mean every decision should be converted into a complicated SOP.
That can create another problem: organisations sometimes respond to operational problems by creating excessive documentation that nobody actually uses.
The objective should be much simpler.
A good process should make it reasonably clear:
What needs to happen → Who owns it → When it needs to happen → What information is required → What does completion look like?
The exact level of documentation will depend on the work.
Some processes may need detailed SOPs.
Others may only need a checklist, a responsibility matrix, a tracker or a clearly defined workflow.
The important thing is that the work should not depend entirely on someone's memory.
The test I find useful
There is a simple question that can reveal a lot about an organisation:
"What happens if the person currently handling this is unavailable tomorrow?"
If the answer is:
"Someone else can pick it up because the process and information are clear."
That's a healthy sign.
If the answer is:
"We need to ask that person."
Then there may be a dependency worth examining.
This doesn't mean the person is the problem.
Usually, the opposite is true.
The organisation may have relied on that person's initiative and experience for so long that the underlying process was never properly converted into a system.
People are still important
There is a danger in taking this idea too far.
Organisations are made of people. Experience, judgement, relationships and initiative cannot be completely replaced by procedures.
The goal isn't to make people unnecessary.
The goal is to make sure that people add judgement and value instead of repeatedly compensating for gaps in the system.
An experienced employee should be able to improve a process.
They shouldn't have to personally hold the entire process together.
From individual effort to organisational capability
For me, this is one of the differences between simply getting work done and building operational maturity.
In the short term:
"I'll take care of it."
can solve the problem.
But as an organisation grows, the better question becomes:
"How do we make sure this gets taken care of reliably, whoever is responsible?"
That shift is not always easy.
It requires clarity, documentation, ownership, communication and continuous improvement.
But once that shift happens, the organisation becomes less fragile.
The objective of good operations is therefore not to eliminate individual contribution.
It is to turn individual experience into organisational capability.
Simple idea. Hard to implement.
