Thank you to everyone who got up early and joined us for the Succession Planning Coffee Session at inPOWER 2026. I want to share some of what we talked about here.
Every IBMi shop has one. The person who knows why that map was built the way it was, which trading partner breaks if you touch the wrong field, and where the workaround lives that never made it into a document. Then one morning they tell you they're done.
It Happened to Us in June
I asked everyone in that room to be open about this, so here's our story. In June, our CTO and general manager gave notice, and a lot of how we work lived in his head.
When we sat down to map it out, we saw how much of it was living only with him. Some of what we did over the months after worked. Some of it we would do differently.
My biggest lesson was that finding someone new is the easier part. Transferring what he knew is the hard part.
The Hard Part Is the Transfer
Steve Will, IBMi Chief Architect at IBM, said something I keep coming back to: “It's relatively easy to take a computer professional and teach them how to do things on IBMi.”
If that's true, then what walks out the door is the knowledge. The reason behind a setting. The trading partner contact who actually answers. The fix only one person remembers.
The wider numbers say the same thing. Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute estimate manufacturing could need about 3.8 million new employees between 2024 and 2033, and about 2.8 million of those openings come from retirements. SHRM puts the cost of replacing an employee at 50 to 200 percent of annual salary, depending on their level.
Three Steps You Can Start This Week
We built the session around three steps.
First, identify who holds knowledge nobody else does. Skip the org chart and ask what would stop if that person were gone tomorrow.
Second, score two things for each person: how likely you are to lose what they know, and how badly it would hurt. This builds on APQC's Knowledge Loss Risk Matrix, a tool that finds the knowledge at the highest risk of loss and most critical to document or transfer. Knowledge is more likely to be lost when it isn't written down and sits with one person. It hurts most when it ties to operations, revenue, or customers. Where both scores are high, start there.
Third, pick one action for the next ninety days, just one. A documentation session, a shadow week, or a partner who can carry part of the load.
Before you close this post, name one action and one date, out loud if you can.
Where EDI Fits
For a lot of shops in this group, EDI is where this shows up first. The maps, the trading partner specs, the history of why one partner gets its 856 a certain way. That knowledge often sits with one person, and it's a process you can hand to a partner instead of rebuilding in house. That's the work we do every day at UniLink, and I'm always glad to talk it through.
If you want to compare notes on what you found, email me at sarah@unilinkgroup.com. I'd love to hear how it goes!
Thanks, Sarah Butler
President and COO, The UniLink Group
sarah@unilinkgroup.com
What Happens When Your Key Person Leaves?
Thank you to everyone who got up early and joined us for the Succession Planning Coffee Session at inPOWER 2026. I want to share some of what we talked about here.
Every IBMi shop has one. The person who knows why that map was built the way it was, which trading partner breaks if you touch the wrong field, and where the workaround lives that never made it into a document. Then one morning they tell you they're done.
It Happened to Us in June
I asked everyone in that room to be open about this, so here's our story. In June, our CTO and general manager gave notice, and a lot of how we work lived in his head.
When we sat down to map it out, we saw how much of it was living only with him. Some of what we did over the months after worked. Some of it we would do differently.
My biggest lesson was that finding someone new is the easier part. Transferring what he knew is the hard part.
The Hard Part Is the Transfer
Steve Will, IBMi Chief Architect at IBM, said something I keep coming back to: “It's relatively easy to take a computer professional and teach them how to do things on IBMi.”
If that's true, then what walks out the door is the knowledge. The reason behind a setting. The trading partner contact who actually answers. The fix only one person remembers.
The wider numbers say the same thing. Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute estimate manufacturing could need about 3.8 million new employees between 2024 and 2033, and about 2.8 million of those openings come from retirements. SHRM puts the cost of replacing an employee at 50 to 200 percent of annual salary, depending on their level.
Three Steps You Can Start This Week
We built the session around three steps.
First, identify who holds knowledge nobody else does. Skip the org chart and ask what would stop if that person were gone tomorrow.
Second, score two things for each person: how likely you are to lose what they know, and how badly it would hurt. This builds on APQC's Knowledge Loss Risk Matrix, a tool that finds the knowledge at the highest risk of loss and most critical to document or transfer. Knowledge is more likely to be lost when it isn't written down and sits with one person. It hurts most when it ties to operations, revenue, or customers. Where both scores are high, start there.
Third, pick one action for the next ninety days, just one. A documentation session, a shadow week, or a partner who can carry part of the load.
Before you close this post, name one action and one date, out loud if you can.
Where EDI Fits
For a lot of shops in this group, EDI is where this shows up first. The maps, the trading partner specs, the history of why one partner gets its 856 a certain way. That knowledge often sits with one person, and it's a process you can hand to a partner instead of rebuilding in house. That's the work we do every day at UniLink, and I'm always glad to talk it through.
If you want to compare notes on what you found, email me at sarah@unilinkgroup.com. I'd love to hear how it goes!
Thanks, Sarah Butler
President and COO, The UniLink Group
sarah@unilinkgroup.com
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