{{first name | Reader}}
Nobody says "train your replacement." They say "knowledge transfer."
Mine started with a calendar invite for ninety minutes, titled "KT Session 1 of 1." The one of one is the part I keep coming back to.
They are twenty-nine and perfectly decent. Good questions, wrote everything down. Somewhere in the second half they said "so a lot of this is just experience, right?" and I said yes, and neither of us said anything for a moment.
I have twenty-two years in this. They have ninety minutes and access to a shared folder.
Nobody is being cruel here. Somebody put a line on a plan, the line said knowledge transfer, and plans do not have a column for how long a thing takes to actually know.
A RESIGNATION LETTER I WON’T BE SENDING
To: KT Session 1 of 1
Re: Recording available in the shared folder
Please accept this as my formal resignation from the Knowledge Transfer Plan, effective at the end of the ninety minutes.
I have transferred what could be transferred. The list of systems. The passwords, which are in the vault, where they have always been, and which nobody has ever looked at. The four people to call, in order, and what each one will say before they say it.
What I could not transfer in the time allocated: which of those four is lying. Why we run the reconciliation twice. The reason nobody touches the thing in the corner. Which requests can be ignored and which only look like they can. The month it always goes wrong, and why, and what we do about it, which is written down nowhere because it has never once been a decision, only a habit.
I understand the session was recorded. I would gently note that the recording contains everything I said, which is not the same as everything I know, and that the difference is roughly twenty-two years.
Regards,
DEEPLY UNSETTLING MATH
Twenty-two years. Forty-seven working weeks a year. Forty hours a week.
That is 41,360 hours.
The knowledge transfer session was ninety minutes.
A ratio of about 27,000 to one.
One follow-up has been scheduled. They will not need it, because they will not know what to ask.
ONE GENUINELY USEFUL THING: Name the tail before you agree to the handover.
The trap in a knowledge transfer is not the session. It is the six months after it.
Once the session is marked complete, the handover is officially done. Every question that arrives afterward is not a handover, it is a favor, and favors do not appear on anyone's plan or in anyone's workload. You end up doing your job and half of theirs, invisibly.
So before the session, put one line in writing:
"Happy to run this. Realistically there will be questions for a few months afterward. Do you want those coming straight to me, or should we put a standing thirty minutes in so it stays contained?"
You have refused nothing. You have made the tail visible and offered to manage it, which is difficult to argue with.
Two things follow. The tail becomes somebody's decision rather than your unpaid overhead. And if the answer is "just come to you directly," that is now in writing too, which is useful the next time anyone asks why your own work slipped.
The standing thirty minutes is better than it sounds. It ends.
PARKING LOT
Fourth one.
Write the letter you won't send. Hit reply and send it to me. I'll publish it anonymously, and nobody will ever know it was you.
Go do something that isn't work.
R. Countdown
ANY OTHER BUSINESS
Session 2 of 1 has been scheduled.
Enough, Already Club. Form EA-1. Distribution: internal.
Retention: until you leave.