A large organisation runs many strategic initiatives at once, often well-funded and well-staffed. What rarely gets funded is the connection between them: a way for one team to know what another has already tried, learned or built.
So initiatives run in parallel, each one a silo. Knowledge accumulates inside it, and mostly stays there.
Redone, not reused
A sector rebuilds a capability another sector quietly finished eighteen months earlier. A department restarts a process redesign that a neighbouring team already worked through, mistakes included. Nobody chose to duplicate the effort. Nobody could see it had already been done.
The knowledge leaves with the person
Add movement and the problem compounds. People change roles, change teams, leave the organisation. The experience gained running an initiative, what worked, what didn't, who to call, moves with them. The next team doesn't just lack an answer. They don't know a question was already answered.
The critical few
Inside most organisations there are people who aren't the most senior or the best known, but who are the reason things actually move: well-networked, trusted across teams, quietly holding a process together by knowing who to call and how to get something unstuck. Because that role is informal, it rarely shows up on an org chart. Most people only notice it existed once that person leaves, and things that were running smoothly start to snag.
Three things to try now
- Before starting a new initiative, ask who else in the organisation has tackled something similar in the last two years, and go find them.
- When someone leaves a strategic initiative, capture what they know in a conversation, not only a handover document. Ask what they'd tell their replacement that isn't written down anywhere.
- Ask a handful of people who they go to when something is stuck. If the same name keeps coming up and it isn't on anyone's list of key roles, that's worth knowing.
The knowledge and the relationships behind a strategy are real assets. Left unseen, both are only ever one departure away from disappearing.