Running the agency · Area 05
Remembering Things · Rung 2 to rung 4

Stop losing years of knowing every time someone hands in their notice.

The people who hold your agency together still leave. This is about keeping what they knew where the rest of you can find it, with a source and an owner behind every answer.

TuesdayThe one who knew resigns

Your senior account lead gives notice. She has run the biggest client since the pitch, and most of how it works lives only in her head.

The handoverSix weeks is not enough

You book handover sessions, but you cannot write down what you do not know to ask. Half the decisions have reasons no one thought to record.

Month twoA new hire hits the same wall

Her replacement asks why the client signs off in that particular order. Three people half-remember. No one is sure. The old answer walked out the door.

NowThe question gets answered, with a source

The new hire asks the internal system. It returns the approved process, cites the note it came from, and names who owns it. When the file is thin, it says so and points to a person.

Representative scenario. It shows how the system is meant to behave, not something that happened. The people and the client are not real, and this is not a client result.

What gets built

Three plain tools. One useful change.

01

Answers on File

Answers internal questions using only what is on file, and shows the source every time.

It quotes the approved method or decision, links back to where it came from, and never fills a gap with a guess.
02

Document Owners

A named owner sits behind every document, so knowledge does not go stale unwatched.

Each source has a person responsible for keeping it current and a date it was last confirmed, so you can see what is trusted and what is drifting.
03

Knowledge Gaps

A weekly list of questions the system could not answer from the record.

It surfaces where people are still asking things no document covers, so you write the missing knowledge down before the next person leaves.
How it stays honest

The system prepares the work. A person still decides.

It cites, always

Every answer names the source it came from, so you can check the original instead of trusting the summary.

It refuses when unsure

If the record does not hold the answer, it says so and points to the person most likely to know, rather than inventing one.

Someone owns each source

Knowledge only stays trustworthy if a named person keeps it current, so nothing enters the system without an owner.

Approved only

It draws from methods and decisions you have signed off, not from stray drafts, old threads or half-finished notes.

What gets measured

Effort and time first. Outcomes later.

01Questions answered from the record versus escalated to a person
02Time for a new hire to work unaided
03Sources with a named, active owner
04Open gaps from the weekly report
05How often an answer's source is out of date

The early signals are simple: how many questions the record can answer on its own, and how fast a new hire stops needing a shadow. Whether fewer things walk out the door when someone leaves takes longer to see, and you will only trust it after a few departures.

What this area needs from a person

Finished work has to land somewhere it can be found again, with an owner keeping it current. This is the most fragile input on the list. When it stops, everything downstream degrades quietly, and nobody notices until they go looking for something that was never filed.

The stepPut finished work where it can be found again
How oftenAt project close
See how the Lookout works
Remembering Things · Rung 2 to rung 4

Keep what your people know before the next notice lands.

Most of the work is cleaning up the record and giving every source an owner. I start with the knowledge you would most hate to lose, and build out from there.

Ask about this rung moveSee the Systems Ladder