Every organization has that one person. You know the one. They know where the old event photos are stored, which vendor gives you the best pricing, how the annual grant report actually gets completed, and why the website login is connected to an email address nobody remembers creating.
They can tell you who to call when something breaks, where to find the paperwork from an event five years ago, and which board member originally approved a decision that nobody else remembers making. If something needs to get done, chances are someone is going to say, “Just ask them. They’ll know.”
And they usually do.
Having someone with that much experience and knowledge is incredibly valuable, especially for small businesses and nonprofits where people often take on responsibilities that go well beyond their original job descriptions. But there’s a problem that tends to get overlooked until something goes wrong. When one person knows how everything works, your organization becomes dependent on that person being available.
What happens when they go on vacation, get sick, decide to retire, or simply reach the point where they can’t keep doing everything?
Suddenly, everyone realizes just how much information was living in one person’s head.
How Does So Much Information End Up With One Person?
I don’t think most organizations intentionally create this situation. It usually happens gradually, and often for perfectly understandable reasons.
Someone joins the organization and discovers they’re particularly good at handling a certain task. Maybe they’re comfortable with technology, good at organizing events, or just happen to remember details that everyone else forgets. So naturally, people start asking them for help.
At first, it’s convenient. Why spend time figuring something out when someone already knows how to do it?
Over time, that person takes on more responsibilities, becomes the unofficial expert on several different systems, and eventually ends up being the only one who knows how certain things work.
A few years later, nobody remembers how the process started, and everyone assumes that person will just keep handling it.
This happens frequently in nonprofits, museums, volunteer organizations, and small businesses because there often isn’t a dedicated person responsible for documenting procedures or training replacements. People are busy doing the work, and writing down how they do it rarely feels like the most urgent thing on the list.
Until it is.
I’ve seen how much knowledge longtime volunteers and staff members carry, especially in organizations with years of history. They remember decisions that were made long before the current leadership arrived, relationships that have been built over decades, and little details that never made it into meeting minutes or official records.
That knowledge is incredibly valuable, but if it isn’t captured somewhere, the organization risks losing it when those people move on.
How Do You Know If Your Organization Has a Knowledge Problem?
You probably don’t need a formal assessment to recognize some of the warning signs. They tend to show up in everyday conversations, especially when someone is trying to get something done and can’t figure out where to start.
Maybe you’ve heard a few of these:
- “Just ask Dana. She knows how that works.”
- “We can’t do that until John gets back.”
- “I know we did this last year, but I don’t remember how.”
- “I think the instructions are in someone’s email.”
- “Nobody’s touched that account since the last person left.”
- “We’ve always done it that way, but I’m not sure why.”
Individually, these might seem like minor inconveniences. Every organization has occasional gaps in communication, and nobody can reasonably be expected to document every conversation or decision.
But when the same tasks repeatedly come to a stop because one specific person isn’t available, that’s worth paying attention to.
Another warning sign is how difficult it is for new people to get involved. If a new employee or volunteer spends months trying to figure out basic procedures because nobody has written anything down, you’re making it harder than necessary for someone to contribute.
And let’s not overlook what this does to the person everyone depends on. Being the one who knows everything might feel good at first, but it can become exhausting when you’re constantly interrupted, answering the same questions, and trying to keep up with your own responsibilities.
Sometimes the most valuable thing you can do for that person is make sure they aren’t the only one who knows how to do their job.
You Don’t Need a Hundred-Page Operations Manual
Whenever I bring up documenting institutional knowledge, I can practically see people imagining another enormous project that nobody has time to finish.
I get it. The idea of creating policies, procedures, training materials, and detailed instructions for everything your organization does sounds overwhelming, especially when you’re already struggling to keep up with the work itself.
But you don’t have to start there.
In fact, I’d strongly recommend that you don’t.
You can begin with a few simple notes, a shared document, or a short screen recording that explains how something gets done. The goal isn’t to create a perfectly formatted manual that looks impressive sitting in a folder. It’s to make sure someone else can find the information they need and actually use it.
There are five things I’d focus on first.
1. Figure Out What Only One Person Knows
Start by asking the people on your team a simple question: “If you were unavailable for a month, what would someone else have trouble figuring out?”
You might be surprised by the answers.
Someone might be the only person who knows how to update your website. Another might handle all the communication with a particular vendor. Maybe one volunteer knows how to prepare the building for an event, while someone else has the entire process for submitting an annual report memorized.
Write those things down. You don’t need to solve them all immediately, but you do need to know where your organization is vulnerable.
And don’t limit the conversation to official job responsibilities. Some of the most important information in an organization is held by people who have quietly taken care of things for years without anyone realizing how much they actually do.
2. Capture the Information in Whatever Way Is Easiest
Not everyone enjoys writing instructions, and asking someone to sit down and document every step of a process might be the fastest way to ensure it never happens.
Instead, make it easy.
If someone knows how to complete a task, ask them to walk another person through it while taking notes. If it’s something done on a computer, record a short screen video showing the steps. If the process involves a lot of decisions or background information, have a conversation and capture the important details.
You can even use AI to help turn rough notes or a transcript into a more organized set of instructions, provided you’re careful about what information you’re sharing and someone familiar with the process reviews the result.
The first version doesn’t need to be beautiful. It just needs to exist and be understandable.
A slightly messy document that someone can actually follow is far more useful than a perfectly designed manual that never gets finished.
3. Put It Somewhere People Can Find It
This is where organizations sometimes create a whole new problem while trying to solve the original one.
Someone takes the time to document a process, saves it to their computer, and six months later nobody can remember where the instructions went.
Now you’ve got institutional knowledge that technically exists in writing but is still unavailable to the people who need it.
Choose one shared location for your procedures, reference materials, and important organizational information. That might be a folder in Google Drive, SharePoint, or another system you’re already using.
Give the folders and documents names that make sense to the people who will be looking for them. If everyone calls something the “event setup checklist,” don’t hide it under a folder called “Operational Readiness Procedures.”
And make sure the right people have access. Information that only one person can open isn’t much of an improvement over information that only one person knows.
Of course, sensitive information still needs appropriate protection. Passwords belong in a secure password manager, and confidential records should only be accessible to authorized people. Making information easier to find doesn’t mean making everything available to everyone.
4. Write the Instructions for Someone Who Has Never Done the Task
One of the easiest mistakes to make when documenting a process is assuming that everyone already understands the things you take for granted.
If you’ve been handling something for ten years, you probably don’t think twice about the little steps involved. You know which folder to open, who needs to approve something, and what to do when the usual process doesn’t work.
Someone doing it for the first time doesn’t know any of that.
When you’re writing instructions, think about what a new employee or volunteer would need to know. Where do they start? What information or materials do they need? Who should they contact if something goes wrong? How will they know when the task is finished?
You don’t have to explain every tiny detail, but you do need to include the things that aren’t obvious to someone who hasn’t done it before.
And if there’s a particular reason something is done a certain way, include that too. Sometimes understanding WHY a process exists is just as important as knowing how to follow it.
5. Let Someone Else Try It
This might be the most useful step in the entire process.
Once you’ve documented something, ask another person to follow the instructions without having the usual expert standing beside them explaining every step.
See where they get stuck.
Maybe you forgot to mention which account they need to use, or the instructions refer to a folder that was renamed last year. Perhaps there’s a step that seems completely obvious to you but makes absolutely no sense to someone who’s never done the task.
That’s not a failure. That’s exactly what you’re trying to discover.
Fix the confusing parts, answer the questions that came up, and you’ve already made the process more useful for the next person.
Make Sharing Knowledge Part of How You Work
One of the reasons institutional knowledge becomes such a problem is that organizations treat documentation as something they’ll get around to when things slow down.
And we all know how that usually goes.
There’s always another event to plan, another deadline to meet, or something more urgent that needs attention. By the time someone finally has an opportunity to write down what happened, half the details have already been forgotten.
A better approach is to make capturing useful information part of the work itself.
When someone figures out how to solve a recurring problem, take a couple of minutes to write down what worked. When an event wraps up, make a few notes about what went well, what needs to change, and what the next person should know. When you update a process, update the instructions while the details are still fresh.
It doesn’t have to become another major responsibility. Often, a few minutes of documentation now can save someone else hours of frustration later.
And over time, those little notes start becoming something much more valuable: a collection of organizational knowledge that doesn’t disappear every time someone changes roles.
There’s a Reason the Fire Service Takes Handoffs Seriously
One thing I appreciate about the fire service is the importance placed on passing along information. When responsibility changes hands, the incoming crew needs to know what’s happening, what equipment or issues need attention, and anything else that could affect their ability to do the job.
You don’t want someone discovering an important problem simply because the person who knew about it went home.
Small businesses and nonprofits may not be dealing with the same situations, but the principle still applies.
When a board member finishes their term, when a volunteer coordinator steps down, or when an employee moves into a different role, the next person should have more than a collection of old emails and a cheerful “Good luck!”
They should know what they’re responsible for, where the important information lives, what deadlines are coming up, and who to contact when they need help. They should also understand any ongoing issues or decisions that haven’t been resolved.
A good handoff doesn’t have to be complicated, but it does need to happen while the person with the knowledge is still available to explain it.
Waiting until after they’ve left is a pretty difficult way to learn everything they knew.
Don’t Forget the People Behind the Knowledge
There’s another part of this conversation that I think deserves attention.
When we talk about protecting institutional knowledge, it’s easy to focus entirely on what the organization might lose. But there’s also a person on the other side of that equation, and chances are they’ve spent years being the one everyone turns to when something needs to get done.
That person may be proud of what they’ve built and the responsibilities they’ve taken on. They may also be tired of being interrupted constantly, feeling like they can’t take a vacation, or worrying that something will fall apart if they aren’t available.
Documenting what they know isn’t about making them less valuable or replacing their experience. It’s about respecting the work they’ve done and making sure the organization can continue benefiting from it.
It’s also an opportunity to recognize contributions that might otherwise go unnoticed. Sometimes you don’t realize how much someone has been handling until you start asking them to explain what they do.
And if you’re the person who knows where everything is, this applies to you too. You deserve to be able to step away without wondering whether your phone is going to ring because nobody can find the event registration form.
Start With One Thing This Week
If you’re reading this and realizing that your organization has a serious case of “just ask that one person,” please don’t respond by creating a massive documentation project that becomes one more unfinished item on someone’s to-do list.
Start with one task.
Choose something important that only one person knows how to do, preferably something that would create a real problem if they weren’t available. Set aside thirty minutes to talk through the process, record the steps, and save the information somewhere the right people can access it.
Then have someone else try following those instructions.
Once that’s working, pick another task. You don’t have to document everything in a week, and you certainly don’t have to make it perfect before anyone can use it.
Over time, you’ll start building a collection of practical information that makes it easier to train new people, share responsibilities, and keep things running when someone is unavailable.
The goal isn’t to make everyone know everything. It’s to make sure your organization doesn’t lose what it needs to know when one person leaves.
And if you’re the person everyone calls because you know where everything is, maybe this is your opportunity to finally take a vacation without your phone becoming the organization’s emergency help desk.
Sometimes it’s hard to recognize the gaps when you’ve been working around them for years. You get used to asking the same person for information, hunting through old emails, or figuring things out again because nobody remembers how they were handled last time.
The Signal Check is a practical starting point for identifying where important information is getting lost, where work depends too heavily on one person, and what might be worth documenting first.
At Signal Five Media, I help small businesses and nonprofits organize their information, build practical systems, and preserve the knowledge that keeps their organizations running.
Because the work you’ve already done, the relationships you’ve built, and the things you’ve learned along the way are too valuable to disappear when someone moves on.
