42% of know-how is in your team's heads

Forty-two percent of what your team knows how to do lives only in their heads.

That figure comes from a Panopto survey of about a thousand employees at larger US companies, describing their own jobs. In a small business I'd expect it to be higher, because so much of it sits with the owner.

Think about what you know that nobody has written down: what you say to an unhappy customer, how you chase a late payment, and what gets checked before a job goes out.

You can't hand any of that to a new hire until it's out of your head. You can't hand it to AI either, because AI only works from what you give it.

AI is also the fastest way I know to get it out.

Open Claude or ChatGPT and type: "Interview me about how I handle unhappy customers. Ask me one question at a time until you could do the job yourself, then write it up as a one-page guide."

You don't have to type your answers. Talk them into your phone, the way you'd explain it to someone sitting beside you.

Most of its questions will land on things you've never written down, the small judgement calls you make every week without thinking about them. Those are the parts a new hire is most likely to get wrong.

At the end you have one page your team can follow, and the same page gives your AI the context to handle that job the way you would.

Pick one job today and let AI interview you about it.