A new person doesn't inherit a process. They invent one.

Some businesses sell things people think about for months before committing. The enquiries arrive steadily — a few dozen a week — and each one is answered personally by the owner, usually within a day or two, with whatever information was asked for. A week or so later he tries to make contact again. Sometimes he does. Sometimes he forgets.

Nobody in the business would call this a problem, because from the outside it works. Enquiries get answered. Customers buy. The ones who drift away don't announce themselves, so there is nothing to count and nothing to explain.

Then he hires someone to take it on, which is the sensible thing to do, and tells them to settle in before changing anything.

They settle in by watching. They ask a few questions, get a few answers, and fill the rest with judgement. Within a month they have a way of doing it: their own wording, their own timing, their own sense of when to chase and when to leave someone alone. It isn't a bad way. It's simply a second way, held in a second head, and no more written down than the first.

The business now handles more enquiries than it did, so the hire looks like a success. What actually changed is that the number of people who have to remember went from one to two.

You can't hand over a process that was never written down. You can only hand over the remembering.

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