Operations consulting · Problems we solve

Everything goes through a few people.

Two or three people hold the knowledge, sign off the work, or handle the hard cases. When they’re out, things stall. When they retire, the know-how leaves with them.

92% of organizations don’t consistently capture the knowledge of people about to retire. APQC, 2025

Book a 30-minute conversation How we fix it
What usually gets tried

Why the usual fixes don’t hold

Ask them to write it all down

Documents capture steps, not judgment. And the people who know the most have the least time to write.

Hire a backup

A new hire can’t absorb years of experience in a few months, and the experts are too busy to teach.

Give them more help

Help with admin frees a little time, but the work still routes to them, so the queue in front of them keeps growing.

The problem is how the work is routed to them, not only what they know.

Often the experts have become the bottleneck: decisions and hard cases wait for them, even ones others could handle with a little authority or support. Moving that work, and building a second person deep where it matters most, takes pressure off faster than any hire.

How we fix it

We map who knows what, and where you’re one person deep.

Step 1

Map the knowledge

Short interviews with the experts and the people around them: what they know that nobody else does, and what waits for them.

Step 2

Find where you’re exposed

Which skills, customers, or decisions depend on one person, and which of that work truly needs them.

Step 3

Plan two people deep

Name owners, promote learners, cross-train, and move authority where it’s safe. Hire last.

What you get

Who knows what, and a plan to get two people deep

2–3
weeks
8–12
hours of your people’s time, in total
Fixed
fee, agreed in a one-page scope before anything starts

We call this a Key Expert Map.

  • A coverage map: who knows what, and where you’re one person deep
  • Which work waits for your experts, and which could move
  • A plan to get two people deep without hiring first
  • The reasoning, in plain language you can share

If the experts sit at the center of a bigger delivery problem, a Delivery Flow diagnostic (about 4 to 6 weeks) follows the work across teams. You decide.

Example

Everything went through two people

Illustrative example: composite, synthetic data

Large-loss claims at a regional property insurer

Every large claim needed sign-off from one of two senior adjusters, who could each give about 20 hours a week to reviews. The manager’s words: “Everything goes through two people.” One of the adjusters said: “I’m qualified to sign those. I just don’t have the authority.”

What changed: Sign-off authority for an adjuster who was already qualified, plus a checklist at intake. Reviewer load fell from 97% to 64%, and the wait for a review fell from about 13 days to under an hour. No new hire.

The idea underneath

Experts know more than they can tell.

The people who understand your operation best sense what’s wrong long before they can explain it. That judgment is fast and often right, but it’s hard to hand to someone else. Matrix turns it into reasoning others can follow, check, and use, which is how knowledge stops being locked in a few heads.

How we know: the methods behind the answer

Start with 30 minutes

Tell us where the work gets stuck.

A short, honest conversation. Here’s how the 30 minutes go:

  • 0–5We agree what we’re here for. Either of us can decide it isn’t a fit, and that’s fine.
  • 5–20You tell us what’s going wrong, in your words. Where does work get stuck? Who does everything go through?
  • 20–25We tell you honestly whether we can help, and recommend one step if we can.
  • 25–30You hear exactly what that step would ask of your people and what it costs. Then you decide whether to take it.

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