Every business has someone like this. They know which customer needs a call before the invoice goes out. They know why the supplier always delivers on time for them and not for anyone else. They know the workaround that keeps the system running, the pricing logic behind the big contract and the history behind a decision made five years ago.
Most of the time, this is a strength. It is often why the business works so well. The trouble is that it only stays a strength while that person is available, well and willing to carry on carrying it.
The trigger is rarely retirement
When we talk about knowledge concentrated in one person, most people think of the long-serving colleague approaching retirement. That is one version but it is far from the only one. The moment of exposure can arrive in many ways:
- The business outgrows what one person can hold in their head and things start to slip.
- Illness, family emergencies or an unplanned leave of absence arrive without warning.
- A key person is offered something better and the notice period is far too short.
- Someone moves up but their old job (and everything they knew) doesn’t move with them.
- Acquisition or investment. Someone outside the business starts asking how things really work.
- A planned handover turns out to be far harder than anyone expected.
- The person everyone relies on becomes the bottleneck and quietly runs out of capacity.
In each case the question is the same and it is a simple one: could someone else confidently pick this up tomorrow?
Why it stays hidden
Key-person dependency is easy to miss precisely because things appear to be going well. The person is capable, trusted and generous with their time. Colleagues get answers quickly so nobody feels the need to change anything. The dependency builds gradually, one “just ask Sam” at a time.
It also rarely feels like a risk from the inside. For the individual, being the person who knows can be a source of pride but sometimes of anxiety. With care and thought it is worth asking them to share what they know so that, to them and to you, it does not look like a comment on their future.
Even where the moment of change is foreseeable, many businesses haven’t prepared for it. Armstrong Watson’s 2026 survey of more than 840 UK family, privately owned and owner-managed businesses found that 71% expect to leave within the next ten years, with almost 44% planning to do so within five. Yet only half have included exit or succession in their business plan and among those planning to leave within five years, 43% have yet to do so.
The report makes a point that sits at the heart of this issue: succession is not only a transfer of ownership but a transfer of knowledge, relationships, leadership and responsibility. It also lists owner dependency among the factors that can affect how attractive and valuable a business is to a successor or buyer. If a planned handover so often goes unprepared, the unplanned ones (illness, resignation, overload) are likely to find businesses even less ready.
You don’t need to document everything
The usual response to this problem is a large documentation exercise: capture everything, write it all down, build the manual. It rarely works. It is slow, it goes out of date and much of what matters (judgement, relationships, context) doesn’t fit neatly on a page.
A more practical approach is to focus on the dependencies that would really hurt if they disappeared tomorrow.
- Start with the critical few. Ask which roles, relationships, decisions or processes would cause the most disruption if the person involved were unavailable for a month. That is usually a short list and it tells you where to start.
- Run the “pick it up tomorrow” test. For each item on the list, ask whether someone else could take it on with confidence not just with a set of instructions. If the honest answer is “not really”, you have found a genuine dependency.
- Separate what needs recording from what needs developing. Some knowledge can and should be written down: where files live, how a system is configured, who to contact and why. Other knowledge is judgement and it builds through experience, shadowing and conversation. Treating the two differently saves a lot of wasted effort.
- Share the relationships not just the contact details. A supplier or customer contact in a spreadsheet is not the same as a relationship. Introduce a second person early and let them be present for the conversations that matter.
- Make decision-making visible. Where one person makes the call, ask what they consider and why. Even a few lines of “how I usually decide” gives colleagues something to work from.
- Build in a deputy not a manual. For the most critical roles, identify someone who is regularly involved and can step in. A named second person with real exposure to the work is worth more than a long document.
- Make it normal, not personal. Position this as good business practice that applies to everyone and as something that gives the individual more freedom (to take leave, to move up, to switch off), not less security.
A small step is enough to start
You don’t need a programme to begin. Pick one person, one area and the one thing that would be hardest to replace. Then ask: who else could handle this and what would they need to know?
What we are hearing through Building a Better Business
One of the questions Alcea is exploring through the Building a Better Business (BBB) research is what currently makes businesses vulnerable or harder to improve. Concentrated knowledge is a strong candidate. When so much depends on one person’s memory and availability, change becomes riskier and improvement slows down because nobody is quite sure what will break.
If you lead a business and want to share what you are seeing, we would love to hear from you. We are speaking with business leaders as part of the BBB interviews and a conversation with you would help shape what we learn. There is no pressure and no sales pitch, just an honest discussion about what is working and what isn’t.
To find out more, visit alceaconsulting.com.