I’ve been there. I was the keeper of keys and grounds at Hogwarts, the Hagrid of more than one business. If something needed fixing, finding, or figuring out, you’d hear it from across the building: “Hey Joan.” That was my real job title. It felt good to be needed. But I can see now what the owner couldn’t see then: I was one of the biggest employer risks in that business, and nobody had a plan for it.
When One Person Becomes the Business
Here’s the question I want every small business owner to sit with: if one of your key players left tomorrow, would your business keep running? If you hesitated, you already know the answer. Somewhere along the way, that person stopped being part of your business and became your business.
This almost never happens because of bad management or bad ownership. It happens because your manager is amazing. They’re reliable, they know everything, and they always pick up. So you leaned on them. Then you leaned a little harder. Before long, every question, every approval, and every “where do we keep the…” runs through one phone number.
The Two Sides of This Employer Risk
The obvious side: if that manager quits, gets sick, or goes on vacation, the business stalls. Orders wait. Customers wait. You scramble.
The less obvious side: fifty calls a day that stretch into the evening is exactly how you burn out your best person and lose them. The dependency you built to feel safe becomes the very reason they walk out the door. That’s a fear a lot of owners carry quietly, and it’s a fair one.
And when that person goes, everything in their head goes with them. The workarounds, the vendor contacts, the “you have to do it this way or the system breaks.” All of it.
This Isn't an HR Problem. It's an Operations Problem.
It’s tempting to treat this as a people issue. Be nicer to your manager. Give them a raise. Make them take a real vacation. Those things matter, but they don’t remove the risk. The fix is operational: get the processes and the information out of one person’s head and into your business, where everyone can reach it.
No More Two-Day Scramble Before Vacation
You know the drill. Your manager has a vacation coming up, and for two days beforehand everybody is running around making sure the work gets covered. Notes get scribbled. Passwords get texted. Someone says “just call me if anything comes up,” and you both know that call is coming.
That scramble is a signal. It’s telling you the process doesn’t exist yet. When the process is written down and more than one person knows how to run it, vacation is just vacation.
How to Build a Business That Doesn't Depend on One Person
If you build it, they will come. Or in this case, they can go, and you won’t be left in a pickle. Here’s where to start:
- Document the work. Start with the tasks only one person knows how to do. Sit down together and write out the steps, the logins, the contacts, and the gotchas.
- Cross-train. Pick at least one backup for every critical task. Have them actually do the task, not just watch it done.
- Map the decisions. Decide which calls your manager can make without you and which ones truly need you. Fewer 8 PM phone calls for everybody.
- Keep it current. A process written three years ago is almost as risky as no process at all. Update it whenever things change.
None of this is about replacing your best person. It’s about protecting them, and protecting the business you’ve both worked so hard to build. People who aren’t carrying the whole place on their shoulders tend to stay. And if you ever do need to hire, having this in place makes bringing someone new up to speed much faster. Here’s why your hiring process might be stuck if that’s where you are right now.
Prepare Now, Not After It Happens
It’s always better to be prepared for the day your key person isn’t there than to be caught completely off guard when it comes. Good business preparedness isn’t only about storms and power outages. It’s about people, too. The SBA’s guidance on how to plan for disruptions is a solid place to start thinking it through.
Take the time. Make the plans. Build the processes. That way, when Hagrid heads off to find the giants, your business keeps right on running.
Who is the "Hey Joan" in your business?
I don’t do one-size-fits-all. I’ll help you get what lives in one person’s head into your business, built around the way you actually work.