Human Operational Debt

Large economic and commercial enterprises have a written and implemented procedural manual, use the latest technological systems, and possess a robust digital platform that is supposed to make procedural errors impossible. Yet, a system that is error-proof only because a single employee prevents mistakes is not truly strong.

An institution may appear tightly controlled from the outside: transactions are regular, customers are satisfied, and reports record no disruptions. However, there is an employee who knows where the problem begins, whom to contact when the screen fails to provide answers, and how to execute exceptions without them turning into crises.

The more competent he becomes, the greater the institution’s ability to conceal its weaknesses; he catches errors before they appear in reports, repairs procedures before they reach management, and prevents losses.

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I call this reliance “human operational debt”; it is a concept proposed by the author of these lines to describe what an institution borrows daily from a person’s memory, professional judgment, relationships, and undocumented interventions, without recording any of this in its books.

This debt does not have monthly installments, nor is its value deducted from profits. However, it becomes fully due on the day the individual resigns, falls ill, or moves to a competitor. At that point, the institution does not merely lose an employee; it may also lose part of its way of working.

A replacement may take months to discover what the predecessor knew in minutes. Investors or shareholders may then realize that some profits were not the fruit of a sustainable system, but a hidden return on the presence of a human being whom the institution holds only through an expiring contract.

For this reason, management standards distinguish between the mere existence of information and the establishment of a “knowledge management system,” just as they distinguish between business continuity on ordinary days and possessing a “business continuity system.” A written procedure describes the normal path, but it does not guarantee that the institution will know how to act if that path is closed, nor that another person will possess the knowledge, authority, and relationships necessary to open an alternative route.

This does not contradict the value of exceptional leadership. The “Level 5” leader, in Jim Collins’ concept, directs his ambition toward the institution and its purpose, not toward self-aggrandizement. Therefore, the greatest achievement of such a leader is not to make everyone perpetually dependent on him, but to transform his expertise into a capability that endures after he is gone.

However, separating the message from its bearer is not a recent managerial discovery. God Almighty said: “And Muhammad is not but a messenger. [Other] messengers have passed on before him. So if he was to die or be killed, would you turn back on your heels [to unbelief]?”

Imam Al-Qurtubi, in his exegesis, stated: “One must adhere to what the messengers brought, even if the messenger is lost due to death or killing,” and then affirmed that “religions do not perish with the death of prophets.”

When Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq (may God be pleased with him) recited this verse aloud after the Prophet’s (peace and blessings be upon him) passing, he did not restore the lost individual; rather, he restored to the community its ability to continue after him.

The tragedy remained, but the disturbance did not turn into collapse; because the foundation was greater than the individuals, and the message was more enduring than its bearer.

Treatment does not begin with writing more procedures; the problem may be that the institution documents the work it knows, while leaving undocumented the work that only one person knows. The smarter starting point is to identify decisions that await a specific person, customers who contact only him, exceptions that move only from his phone, and errors that the system fails to detect because it has become accustomed to being preceded by them. Then comes the test that reports do not flatter.

In the banking sector, a supervisory measure known as “mandatory absence” has been introduced. The U.S. Federal Reserve has directed that individuals occupying sensitive positions be temporarily removed from their posts for continuous periods, with another employee assuming their daily duties during their absence. While the original purpose of this measure was to enhance oversight and uncover violations that require the perpetrator’s presence, its underlying logic offers economic institutions another highly insightful test: what halts, slows down, or waits for the return of its owner is the part that has not yet become institutionalized.

The first decision an institution must make is to hire an exceptional individual. The second is to transform that individual’s uniqueness into distributed knowledge, a capable substitute, institutionalized relationships, and a system that does not rely on a hero to appear sound. A company that functions only in the presence of a particular employee does not own that employee; rather, the employee owns the company’s continuity.

The danger is not that competent individuals will leave, but that we may one day discover that part of the institution was registered under their name—not in its books, but in its operations.

A Kuwaiti writer