I’ve been through a few transformation programs over the years. New billing platforms, CRMs, automation, AI. The technology keeps changing.

One thing never does.

The workaround nobody wrote down

A new starter leans across the desk, watching an experienced colleague click through three extra screens to clear an error.

“Just do it this way when you see that message. It’s not in the work instructions.”

It never is.

Every operation runs on workarounds like this.

They’re rarely a shortcut round the process. They’re evidence of people quietly solving for the outcome the documented process couldn’t. Built up over years of customers, regulation, exceptions and edge cases — and never written down anywhere.

Not in the process documentation. Not in the knowledge base. Not in training. Compliance may have never seen it.

New starters don’t learn it in induction. They learn it the way the one above did — leaning over someone’s shoulder, months in.

Where the gap shows up

Then the transformation lands.

Current-state gets mapped. The new platform gets configured. Testing signs off. Everyone gets ready for go-live. On paper, it all looks ready.

What doesn’t show up on any slide is that the business has been running on years of accumulated knowledge, not on the documented process alone.

The gap only shows up after go-live.

Simple things suddenly need manual handling. Customers feel it. The experienced people become the ones everyone turns to, because they’re the only ones who actually know how it all works.

So, the organisation builds a specialist team. Adds headcount. Finds new ways to absorb the exceptions.

The cost was already there

Here’s the part worth considering. That cost wasn’t created by the new technology.

It was already there.

The transformation just switched the lights on.

I’ve come to see this as a leadership question long before it’s a delivery one. Before you touch the technology, go and understand how the work actually gets done. Not what the process map says — how experienced people quietly deliver the right outcome, day after day.

Technology can replace a system.

It can’t replace knowledge that was never written down.

Next time a transformation business case lands on your desk, ask one question: where does that knowledge live, and who owns capturing it before go-live — not after.