There is a spreadsheet in your company that knows more than your system. Everyone knows whose it is

There is a spreadsheet in your company that knows more than your system. Everyone knows whose it is.

Nobody keeps the wrong person out of affection. They keep them because that person was decisive in the previous phase and nobody wants to be the one who closes that account.

In 2022 I replaced three people in the energy operation. One held a position of trust and ran the area on a spreadsheet, not on the ERP. It was not incompetence: it was the way of working that functioned when the company was smaller, and nobody asked him to let go of it. The information existed, but it only existed when that person was available. I knew this before acting. I held on for six months after knowing, and I have no good defense for those six months.

The problem was never the spreadsheet.

Loyalty is not a virtue in decisions about people. A position of trust is the license the structure gives someone not to be held to the same standard as everyone else.

When information lives in one person, cash starts depending on that person's calendar. The company loses the ability to audit its own operation and calls that agility. Corporate Governance arrives late in these cases, and it arrives expensive: the bill shows up when it is time to raise capital, sell or split.

The chair will be changed one way or another.

The later it happens, the less legacy is left to celebrate.