Every request seems to find its way to the same person. They remember the customer's preference, know which colleague can resolve a problem and spot the deadline that everyone else has missed. When something goes wrong, they quietly put it right.
The business values them, with good reason. But if reliable delivery depends on their constant intervention, there is another question to ask: what would the process look like without the repairs they make every day?
My starting point is to recognise the contribution, then understand the work behind it. A capable colleague deserves a process that supports their judgement and makes their workload manageable.
Good results can conceal a great deal of recovery work
Consider an illustrative service team. Jobs reach the customer on time because one coordinator checks three systems every morning, chases missing instructions and calls the delivery team when a record looks wrong.
The service report shows completed jobs. It does not show the effort required to make those completions happen.
That gap matters. Leaders may see a dependable process when the real source of dependability is a person compensating for incomplete information and unclear handovers. They may add more work on the assumption that the arrangement can absorb it.
Look at what happens between the recorded steps. Who notices the missing detail? Who asks the second question? Who follows up when the expected response never arrives? Those interventions are part of the current operating model, whether or not they appear in a job description.
Separate expertise from avoidable rescue
Some work should depend on experienced judgement. A sensitive customer conversation, an unusual delivery requirement or a difficult prioritisation decision may need someone who understands the context.
Other interventions exist because an ordinary step has failed. The request never reached its owner. The instructions were incomplete. Nobody knew who could approve the exception.
Treat those categories differently. Preserve the judgement and give it a clear place in the process. Investigate the repeated failures so that the same person does not have to keep correcting them.
Asking an experienced colleague to write down everything they know is rarely a useful first instruction. Start with a recent piece of work and follow it together. Ask where they intervened, what alerted them and what would have happened otherwise.
Use absence as a design question
Ask how the work would continue if that colleague were on planned leave. Do this as a supported walkthrough, with their involvement, rather than an unannounced test that puts customers or colleagues under pressure.
Could another person find the current status of a job? Would they know the next action and who could make a decision? Are the relevant records accessible through appropriate shared systems? Is there a clear route for something unusual?
These questions help identify what needs to be shared, documented or delegated. They do not imply that every colleague must be able to do every specialist task.
Where genuine expertise is concentrated in one role, agree sensible cover, access to advice and limits on what a substitute can decide. Resilience can include knowing when to pause and ask for help.
Fix one recurring dependency
Return to the coordinator who checks three systems. Suppose the repeated problem is that jobs reach operations without confirmed access instructions.
A useful improvement might be to make confirmation an explicit handover requirement, name the person responsible for obtaining it and define what happens when it is unavailable. Test whether the receiving team can see the information and identify incomplete requests.
The coordinator can help design that change because they understand the failures. Give them time to contribute; do not add the improvement project on top of an already full recovery workload.
After testing, check what has actually changed. Fewer interruptions, fewer returned jobs and clearer cover arrangements are useful signals. Confirm that the work has not simply moved into another colleague's inbox.
Change what the business recognises
If the only visible achievement is rescuing a difficult situation, prevention can go unnoticed. Make room to recognise the person who removes a recurring problem, prepares another colleague to provide cover or creates a dependable handover.
Discuss what they can do with the capacity released. They may be able to focus on complex cases, develop colleagues, improve the service or finish work within more reasonable boundaries.
Be explicit about responsibilities after the change. A person can remain a respected source of expertise without being the automatic destination for every unresolved task. The new owner needs both the information and the authority to act.
A practical dependency review
Choose one process that seems to rely heavily on a particular colleague and work through these questions with them:
- Which interventions do they make that the normal records do not show?
- Which require their expertise, and which repair a recurring process failure?
- What information or authority would allow another person to handle ordinary cases?
- What would need to be ready for planned absence, including access and cover?
- Which repeated dependency can you improve first, and who owns that change?
- How will you check that service quality holds while the recovery burden falls?
The aim is to understand what makes good performance possible and make that support deliberate. When a colleague repeatedly protects the service from weaknesses in the process, their effort deserves recognition and those weaknesses deserve attention.
Novologix offers business reviews and diagnostics to examine how work actually moves through a business. We can help you identify hidden dependencies and define a practical first improvement with the people who understand the work.