The Key-Person Risk Map

"Only Sarah knows how that system works."

Every organization has a Sarah: brilliant, reliable, and quietly becoming a single point of failure. It doesn't start with a decision. It starts with success, and it's much cheaper to fix before Sarah hands in her notice.

This workbook helps you find your Sarahs, see how much depends on each of them, and spread the knowledge, without making anyone feel replaced.

What's in it

• Find Them: eight questions that surface key-person risk quickly, starting with the vacation test: if this person were unreachable for two weeks, what would stop?
• The Risk Map: one row per system, process or piece of knowledge. Record who knows it, who else could run it, whether it's written down, and who holds the keys. It works out a risk score and flags the gaps, then you choose a next step, an owner and a date.
• Summary: your biggest risks, and one line per person showing how much depends on them. The longest bars are your Sarahs.
• The Conversation: how to raise it so it lands as recognition, not a threat, with the changes to agree.

It comes filled in with a made-up company so you can see it working. Clear the sample in a few seconds and the formulas stay.

Who it's for

Owners, CEOs and technology leaders who suspect too much depends on one or two people, or on a contractor, a vendor, or code that works but nobody on the team really understands.

It builds on Every Organization Has a Sarah (And Why That's a Problem).

It's a single Excel file. It also opens in Google Sheets and Apple Numbers.