[Themaintainers] Succession Planning for Legacy Maintainer

[John Sherk]

Hi Caroline and the rest of the group,

I do succession planning for family businesses and I've done considerable
work on knowledge transfer.  Also I wrote my dissertation on HVAC
maintenance mechanics and most of my clients are in some form of
maintenance.

Here are some thoughts/tips for your challenge:

1.  Do a little reading of Anders Ericsson.  He is, in my opinion, the best
scholar in the world for breaking down expertise, what it is and how it
happens.  He is the scholar behind the "10,000 hours to expertise" concept
made famous by Malcom Blackwell.  I'd flip through *The Cambridge Handbook
of Expertise and Expert Performance* for some orientation to expertise.

2. Realise that, in experts, knowledge, skills, abilities,and performance
all merge together into someone that "just takes the bat and hits the
ball."  It is usually impossible to extract that knowledge from them by
simply interviewing them and observing them.

3. Also realize that they cannot be perfectly replicated without putting
someone else through the same repeated experiences over time.  It may take
several people to replace an expert.

However, to get the best you can do this:

1. Make a list of all the core deliverables the expert provides.
2. Ask the expert to recite or document the steps they take to create that
deliverable.
3. Bring in a person with experience, but not an expert.  Usually the steps
articulated by the expert are not a single act to the person with
experience.  For example an expert sales rep may say, "OK, first, get an
appointment with a prospect."  A non-expert may then say, "But how do I do
that?"
4. Have the experienced non-expert break down the bigger steps to, in this
case, get an appointment.  Document those sub-steps and repeat for all
steps of all the expert's deliverables.
5. Then engage a conversation between the two about why they do it that way
and things to watch out for.  You will begin to hear proverbs and beliefs
around why certain things work and don't work.

Once you have your processes written out for all deliverables and your best
list of proverbs and beliefs about why things work, you will have your
knowledge mostly documented.  Best as you can anyway.

There's the method I use.  Good luck!


*John P. Sherk, Owner/President*

John P. Sherk Consulting

Operations Management Consulting
johnpsherk.com | 601-596-7112
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