Our knowledge must not retire with us

“The boss just has a feel for it.” At first, a sentence like that sounds like a compliment. Like experience, confidence, someone who knows their craft. For a business, however, it also raises a rather uncomfortable question: What happens when the boss is not there?

A recipe can be written down. It gets harder with the knowledge in between. How do I recognise that a raw material is behaving differently today? When do I need to adjust a process? What do I see, smell or feel before a number on the display confirms that something is wrong?

It is precisely this knowledge that makes experience valuable. But it does not get passed on automatically just because someone has stood alongside for long enough.