Documentation and the Lost Art of Being the "Go To Guy" (or Gal)

We've all been there... trying desperately to solve a problem or fix an issue only to realize there's NO documentation, the documentation is out of date, or what little you can find is so sparse and not helpful that you have to hunt down the person that wrote it to try to understand it all while working with a deadline or while being knee deep in an emergency.

It really SHOULDN'T be THAT hard to find and follow procedures when you're dealing with a known issue or troubleshooting similar issues that crop up from time to time. Why is it such a pain sometimes? Because many of us have had it beaten into us... either through experience or by our mentors... that you have to play your cards close to your chest. If you dont, then you'll end up making yourself obsolete. There's a fear that you wont be needed any more because EVERYONE is now a subject matter expert in your particular area of knowledge. As a response to that fear, far too many people force others to come to them for help.. and if its like pulling teeth to get an answer, they wont WANT to come to you for help. There are TONS of people, in every department you can think of, that have this mentality. They're the "go to" for answers, but people hate going to them because they get half answers or a "I'll just fix it myself."

I've seen this in every company I've ever worked for. They THINK they're securing their jobs, but all they're doing is hurting productivity and causing everyone else stress they don't need and it's a sure fire way to "go to" another job when enough people get tired of your shenanigans.

So what's the trick? The best way to secure your job, increase productivity and be THE "go to" person, is to document everything you do, teach everyone everything you know and be as open/forthright as absolutely possible without really getting into how the sausage is made. Most people don't want that much detail, but be willing to get into that detail if you have an interested party. I realize this may sound counter productive and counter intuitive to a lot of people, but by being open you're no longer forcing people to come to you at gun point, but rather people will willingly seek you out for help. They know you'll have the answer and they know you'll do everything within your skill set (or purview if you have restrictions) to get the issue solved.

That's it... that's all there is to it. There's no foolish wand waving or silly incantations involved. It's just understanding what people want, why they want it and the best way to deliver it to them. If you want to secure your job and truly become indispensable, be willing to take the risk that you could put yourself out of a job.

I'll give you an example from my own experiences. About four years ago I started working for a company that makes affordable eyeglasses. My department was a single guy that had been doing the same job for 15 years, I was originally hired to help him with his work load as the company was growing faster than he could manage alone. We'll call him George. George and I were, for all intents and purposes, a Tier 2 escalation section for technical issues that came in from the retail stores scattered across the Continental US, Puerto Rico, Alaska and Hawaii. There was absolutely NO documentation on how to do the job,but that was primarily because the guy doing the job had no time to write any of it down.

Our first months together were a little... rough... because he had convinced himself I was there to take his job rather than help him DO his job. The more I got to know him, the more I realized it was because itd happened to him before. Younger people had been brought in to "help" him and ended up replacing him. It took time, but as I documented everything we did together, George finally started to realize that it was more helpful than something to worry about. We turned our documentation into a procedural manual which, over the course of three years, came to be nearly 300 pages in length. Because of this documentation we were able to grow from one guy doing the job for 15 years, to a four man team in just under a year.

The department's Tier 1 agents stopped dreading having to come see us because we went from a source of contention to one of knowledge making their lives easier. George and I were able to use our documentation to fight back against office politics because it was no longer JUST our word on how things operated, but they were in black and white, signed off by the Department Director (our boss) and the SVP of Retail Operations (our boss' boss). Other departments in the company started reaching out to us because we had learned to work around other road blocks in other departments... roadblocks that had that old mentality of "I'm all there is, you WILL come to me because you have no choice." We shared our documentation with IT Infrastructure, Networking, Security etc and our team became the "go to" for issues out in the field.

January 2020 will mark one year since I left the company for better pay and a change of scenery. I've brought that same mentality with me to my new position and it still continuing to open doors and garner very positive attention. All in all, the secret to being the "go to" guy/gal is being open, being honest, being approachable and teach people how to help themselves. Once you've earned the reputation of being a subject matter expert, once you've learned to say "I don't know the answer but let me see if I can find one" you become the very thing you think your information hoarding grants you.

Remember... don't MAKE people come to you for help, make people WANT to come to you for help. When they learn you know what you're talking about, that you're trustworthy, that you don't make them feel dumb or silly for coming to you for help, they want to come to you MORE and you will truly become indispensable.