When someone gives notice

When the person who knows the numbers leaves

At most consumer brands, one or two people know how the numbers really work: which report to trust, which spreadsheet feeds the board deck, why that adjustment gets made every month. When one of them gives notice, all of that is in their head, and two to four weeks is not long enough to hire and train a replacement. It is long enough to write it down and put a model to work on it.

By Jim Wilson · Updated October 14, 2026

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What walks out the door

  • The definitions. What net revenue means here, which customers count as new, how returns are treated.
  • The sources. Which system wins for cost, inventory and returns, and the reports nobody should trust.
  • The steps. The exports, the lookups, the manual fixes and the order they happen in, for every weekly and monthly report.
  • The judgment. The "that is normal, ignore it" calls that took years to learn.

The notice period, used well

1Week one

Write it down

Interviews with the person leaving, and time spent watching them do the work, not describe it. Every definition, source and judgment call goes on paper.

2Week two

Build the biggest one

The recurring report with the most hours behind it, usually the weekly recap or the close pack, built and checked against their version while they are still there to check it.

3Week three

Hand it over

The rest of their reports ranked by hours, the written definitions, and a team that can run the first workflow without them.

Why it is worth doing even if nobody is leaving

Every brand is one resignation away from this. The same three weeks, run as an operations audit on your own schedule, gets the knowledge out of one person's head before it becomes urgent.

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Questions

What should we capture before they leave?

The definitions they use, the sources they trust and the ones they avoid, every recurring report with its steps, and the judgment calls: the adjustments, the thresholds, the things they ignore and why.

Is a written handover document enough?

It is a good start, and most go unread because they describe steps instead of doing them. Turning the steps into working workflows means the knowledge keeps running instead of sitting in a folder.

Does this mean we do not need to replace them?

Sometimes the role changes rather than disappears. With the recurring reporting running, the next hire can be someone who analyzes rather than someone who assembles, which is usually a better hire.

How fast can this start?

Within days. The interviews with the departing person come first, while they are still there, and the first workflow follows within the same two to three weeks.

Thirty minutes. Bring one question your team answers every week.

I'll show you how generic AI answers it, how your best analyst would, and what it takes to close the gap.

jim@trimtabops.com