Someone leaves. Someone new arrives. The documentation exists, but the replacement still struggles. Because documentation captures explicit knowledge - but most knowledge is tacit. The handoff protocol bridges that gap.
You can't write down judgment. But you can transfer it.
The manual tells you what to do. The handoff tells you how to think.
What Gets Transferred
Explicit Knowledge (Easy)
Processes. Passwords. Org charts. This is what documentation does well. If it can be written, write it. This is table stakes.
Why things are the way they are. History that explains current state. "We do it this way because..." Without context, successors make changes that break things.
Judgment calls. Pattern recognition. Who to call when X happens. The things you know but can't articulate. This is what handoffs lose most.
Who trusts whom. Unwritten dynamics. The real org chart. This transfers through introduction, not documentation.
How To Run A Handoff
The outgoing and incoming person work together. Minimum two weeks. Four is better. Tacit knowledge transfers through doing, not reading.
The successor watches everything. Meetings. Decisions. Firefighting. Context before content. They need to see the job before doing it.
Then swap. The successor does the job while the predecessor watches. Make mistakes while there's a safety net. Questions surface only through doing.
Scheduled time for "what nobody told me" questions. "What's the thing that could blow up that isn't in any doc?" These conversations surface tacit knowledge.
Walk the successor through every key relationship. A warm intro beats a cold email by 10x. Relationships don't transfer through org charts.
What To Ask The Predecessor
- What's the thing that could blow up that isn't documented?
- What do you wish someone had told you on day one?
- What mistake do people always make in this role?
- What did you learn the hard way?
- Who are the three people I should build relationships with first?
- Who do you go to when you're stuck?
- Who has informal power that the org chart doesn't show?
- Who's difficult to work with, and how do you manage it?
- When do you escalate vs. handle yourself?
- What signals do you watch for?
- How do you prioritize when everything's on fire?
- What's the difference between good enough and not good enough here?
- Why do we do it this way?
- What was tried before that didn't work?
- What's the context that explains the weird stuff?
- What should I not change, even if it looks broken?
What Gets Created
Not the official documentation - the annotated version. "The doc says X, but in practice Y." The tacit layer on top of the explicit layer.
Key people, their roles, their quirks, how to work with them. The org chart with personality. Who to loop in, who to avoid, who to butter up.
What went wrong during the predecessor's tenure. What they learned from it. Compressed experience, passed forward.
How the predecessor made judgment calls. Not the answers - the heuristics. "When X happens, I usually Y because Z."
Most handoffs fail not because the successor is incompetent, but because the transfer was incomplete. The explicit stuff transferred. The tacit stuff didn't.
Run the protocol. Overlap. Shadow. Ask the uncomfortable questions. Document what can't be written - by talking about it until it's captured somehow.
Knowledge walks out the door every time someone leaves. The handoff decides how much stays.