You know about dependencies and you know you can’t run without them. You know that when you hire new talent at your company you are sure to fill all your dependencies. You want to make sure you have all the man power to fullfill all the positions and that all the ground is covered. That’s that and were all set, right? Wrong!
So I currently work at a small startup where we did just that. We hired people who are great at what they do, but they have a hard time being flexible when we need them to be. Example: If I write the server infrastructure and manage the team; what happens if I’m gone for a bit. Say I get sick or go on vacation, what happens then? No one else knows how the infrastructure works and no one else has proper rounded technology experience. Answer: Absolutely nothing. So essentially I became a dependency to the work flow. Nothing can happen without me.
This is bad. Because the team is segmented to only work on specfic tasks according to their skills we cannot properly run when one person is missing. A common example of a company is that everyone is a cog in the machine and if one doesnt work then the machine breaks. That is essentially what the company becomes. I think it’s important to educate the employees of your company to be flexible so when a cog is missing the gears can continue to turn. I’m not quite sure on how to get to that point, but I’m up for the challenge.