Many times we think that particular person is very important for organization or company and without him project can not go on as he has been working since long time and he knows everything.
That's just belief everyone has in mind
Everyone is important and same time truth is Everyone is replaceable
We often heard founders are fired from the company which they had built from start so Better everyone should keep in mind that they are replaceable as doing that will not hurt you when you get replaced.
Everyone is important for certain period of time
Sometimes person is very important for particular job, team or company till his work is over or when his replacement is found.
What people do to avoid they don't get replaced ?
- Hide the information they know.
- Don't treat other people well being egoistic of knowing everything.
- Hinder the growth of company and other employees around.
- Don't grow themselves by keeping them to only what they know.
- They don't put important information on paper to avoid being used by others instead they are tried to remember everything.
How to make ourselves aware about this Truth ?
Just think that you won't be coming to office tomorrow due to you are sick or you left the job or whatsoever it may be.
What would happen to company, team or project ? who would be able to take it over and help the company or project ?
You should have proper plan put down from start and documented everything about tasks you are doing and decision you made like so that others can pick up where you left off. Information kept in your head will be forgotten one day and it does not benefit anyone.
This little practice helps lot to you and the organization.
- As everything is documented, you don't need to explain other team members repeatedly.
- Helps to grow yourselves so you can focus on other important things.
- Keeps yourselves free from remembering everything.
- Helps others to grow by delegating your duties to them.
- Frees yourselves to take time off as other team member can take up your tasks.
I have analogy to compare this with software architecture.
Don't be like tightly coupled monolithic architecture but instead
loosely coupled microservice architecture
Rightly it has been said in Karmyog of Bhagvad Gita..
"Do Karma but keep yourself free from Karma instead of tied to it"
Oldest comments (3)
or as Mr David Beazley says, use meta programming if you don't want to be replaceable. :D Jokes apart, valid points everyone needs to think of. Like any thing in your life, we need to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Hope that you are not replaceable and will work at the same place for the next ten year. Put your 100% to make the place better by documenting the processes, making them efficient and helping the team grow. At the same time be prepared that next day you walk in and there is a pink slip waiting for you.
I don't think this is quite true.
There are irreplaceable people and things.
The insight should be that "anything irreplaceable is an critical business liability".
Which means that any business that wants to survive or grow is set up to minimize or eliminate irreplaceable dependencies, which is why you don't see these irreplaceable things so much. :)
Thanks for valuable feedback.
My context was here to individuals instead of business and individual's belief about not being irreplaceable