When 'Everyone Knows the Process' Is a Risk

The comfort of common knowledge

"Everyone knows how this works." It sounds reassuring—a sign that the team is aligned, experienced, competent.

But this phrase is actually a warning sign.

When "everyone knows" the process, no one owns it.

Why implicit knowledge fails at scale

Implicit knowledge works when:

• The team is small and stable
• Everyone has been around long enough to absorb context
• Edge cases are rare and can be handled ad-hoc
• There's always someone available who "just knows"

It fails when:

• The team grows and new hires need to ramp up
• Key people leave or are unavailable
• Volume increases and edge cases become routine
• Consistency matters for customer experience or compliance

The transition from "this works" to "this is breaking" happens faster than organizations expect.

The cost of implicit knowledge

Organizations pay for implicit knowledge in hidden ways:

• Extended onboarding — New hires take months to become effective because knowledge isn't documented
• Single points of failure — Only certain people can handle certain situations
• Inconsistent outputs — "It depends who's working" becomes normal
• Fragility under stress — When volume spikes, the system breaks because knowledge can't scale
• Knowledge loss — When the person who "just knows" leaves, the knowledge leaves too

Signs implicit knowledge is becoming a liability

• "Ask Sarah—she knows how this works"
• New hires shadow veterans for weeks before being productive
• Process questions are answered with "it depends" more than explicit rules
• The same edge case is handled differently by different people
• Vacation coverage requires extensive knowledge transfer

Each of these converts implicit knowledge into explicit operational risk.

How to make implicit knowledge explicit

1. Map how work actually flows — Not how it's supposed to, but how people really do it
2. Document decision rules — When people face choices, what determines the answer?
3. Identify exception patterns — What "edge cases" happen regularly enough to need rules?
4. Assign ownership — Who's responsible for maintaining this knowledge over time?

This isn't bureaucracy—it's building operational resilience.

The stability principle

A stable workflow doesn't depend on specific people being present or having absorbed years of context.

It works because ownership is clear, rules are explicit, and exceptions are handled predictably—even when "the person who knows" isn't available.

Converting "everyone knows" into explicit, owned, documented process is a core part of establishing workflow stability.