Every manufacturing company has one engineer who knows everything.
You know exactly who I'm talking about.
That engineer who's been there forever. Who remembers when the old building was new. Who knows why that machine sounds different on humid days.
Everyone asks them everything.
Sales needs a quote? Ask Mike.
Customer has a weird application? Ask Mike.
Something's failing and nobody knows why? Ask Mike.
And Mike always knows. That's the problem.
Because Mike can only answer ten questions a day. And your business needs him to answer a hundred.
You've joked about cloning him. Usually around 4 PM on Friday when there's a line outside his office.
But you weren't really joking.
You've thought about what happens if Mike gets recruited away. Or retires. Or just gets exhausted answering the same goddamn question about high-pressure valve configurations for the nine hundredth time.
Most companies try to solve this by finding another Mike.
Good luck with that.
Even if you find someone half as good, you've just got two people who can't keep up instead of one.
The companies figuring this out aren't looking for more Mikes.
They're asking a different question: does Mike have to be the one answering every time?
What if Mike answered that valve question once, and that answer became available to everyone who needed it? Sales, partners, new hires, customers.
Mike stops being the bottleneck. He becomes the multiplier.
He can finally work on the problems nobody's solved yet instead of answering the same question 847 times.
That's not replacing your best people. That's letting them be brilliant at what they're actually brilliant at.