Management Myth 36: You Have an Indispensable Employee

Two development managers were arguing: "I need Tom on my team,” Chase said. “He has the specific knowledge I need. We’re not going to be able to release unless we get Tom on my team."

Pierce retorted, "You can't have him. He's working really well with my team. He likes my team. Forget it.”

They went back and forth for a couple of minutes.

Sharon, the VP of engineering interceded. “Can anyone else do that work, Chase?”

“No. Tom used to work on that area a couple of years ago. He trained several people, but they all left.”

Sharon cleared her throat. "Well, there you have it. Move Tom. He's the only person who can do that work."

“No, that’s crazy,” Pierce said. “Chase, your team can learn how to do the work if you give them a chance. You haven't even told them what it entails. You just keep promising them they don’t have to learn. You keep telling them ‘Tom is coming, Tom is coming.’ You’re preventing them from learning.

“I'll loan Tom to you for a week to help your team learn, but Tom likes this team."

"No. Tell Tom he has to move," Chase said.

Sharon nodded. “Pierce, we need this work done now. Tell Tom he has to move. He’s indispensable.”

Pierce shook his head. "No. You tell Tom he has to move; I'm not doing it. Both of you are being ridiculous. Are you telling me that if a person develops expertise and becomes ‘indispensable,’ they get stuck with the same job their entire professional lives here? Forget it.

“I’m leaving before I say anything else. Don't do this. Please, think about this for more than the two minutes you’ve spent on it.”

Pierce left.

Sharon turned to Chase. “Wait a minute. Let me ask you a couple of questions. Have you really been telling your team that Tom is coming and that they don’t have to try to work on this without him?”

Chase nodded. “It’s really intricate code. We don’t have the tests to support the work. It would be much faster with Tom.”

“Can your team learn how to do this work at some point?” Sharon wanted to make sure they were capable of doing the work.

“Well, I’m not sure. I think so. The problem is that this team is part of the move to another state and I’m not sure how many people will stay once we move.”

“Wait a minute. You want to yank Tom away from a team he likes and his current community?”

Chase had the grace to look sheepish. “Well, yes. But it’s for the good of the company.”

“No, it isn’t. Look, what we do is work, not slavery. If he’s this good, how long do you think he’ll actually stay here if we do change his team and ask him to move? Worse, we set a precedent for management idiocy. No. Rethink your options. Pierce is right. Do not move Tom. He can’t be indispensable to you.”

What’s Wrong with Indispensable Employees?
If you have bottlenecks in the organization, you have people who prevent others from learning. You have people who might be disruptors, who might be quite arrogant in their prevention of other people’s learning, although that’s not the case here. You have people who are stuck in their current roles, who are not able to learn or grow in any way, because they must be able to service the organization in their current role.

In addition, you will have a cost of delay for your projects. That’s because work will queue behind this person, until this person can get to it.

It’s not good for the person, the team, the project, or for management.

What Do You Do with Indispensable Employees?
The first thing you do with indispensable employees is to “fire” them. You don’t have to actually fire them, but you have to make them dispensable, not bottlenecks in the organization. There is no reason for anyone to be the one person that everyone depends on.
How can you “fire” an indispensable employee? If you see an employee falling into this role and you have enough time, suggest that your expert does not work alone while you organize a one-week transition plan.

If the indispensable employee works as part of a team, a one-week transition period might be sufficient. However, if the employee works alone or one-on-one with one other person, one week is not enough time to transition all the work. While one week might not be enough time to finish a handoff, it is enough time to start a handoff.

If the team can’t learn everything in one week—and don’t be surprised if they can’t—make sure team members decide how long to learn on their own before they call the expert for help. Do they work as a team for three or four hours? Or, will it be a day? Have the team and the expert decide together what is reasonable.

Over time, the team should call the expert less. If after a month or two the team still calls the expert often, the expert can make herself unavailable for longer periods of time. Instead of responding in a day or so, the expert would respond in a couple of days, and then three days. The idea is that the team still has the expert available, but not easily available. The team needs to learn how to work together to solve problems.

Consider the Growth Mindset
In the growth mindset made famous by Carol Dweck in her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, people realize that they can learn. People realize they are not just a product of their current talents and skills; they can learn at any time and get better. And as a result, people can coach themselves into giving better results.

If managers and the people on the learning team know about the growth mindset, they can apply it to themselves. If managers have the growth mindset about their employees, they realize that they, the managers, have the job of creating an environment in which people can learn. That means that as soon as they have solo experts, the managers have to work to reduce the possibility of an indispensable employee.

Don’t Fall Into the Scarcity Thinking Trap
If you think you only have one alternative—to maintain that indispensable employee where he or she is—reconsider. Indispensable people are a product of scarcity thinking. If you fall into the scarcity-thinking trap, you believe there are winners and losers, that you only have one alternative, that work is a zero-sum game. Don’t believe it.

You have many alternatives to the idea of indispensable employees. What if that employee retired and went to Fiji to sip umbrella drinks? What would you do then?

Address the issue of your indispensable employees now, before they all do retire to Fiji or win the lottery. You want to prepare now.

Read more of Johanna's management myth columns here:

• The Myth of 100% Utilization
• Only the 'Expert' Can Perform This Work
• We Must Treat Everyone the Same Way
• I Don't Need One-on-ones
• We Must Have an Objective Ranking System
• I Can Save Everyone
• I Am Too Valuable to Take a Vacation
• I Can Still Do Significant Technical Work
• We Have No Time for Training
• I Can Measure the Work by the Time People Spend at Work
• The Team Needs a Cheerleader!
• I Must Promote the Best Technical Person to Be a Manager
• I Must Never Admit My Mistakes
• I Must Always Have a Solution to the Problem
• I Know How Long the Work Should Take
• I Must Solve the Team’s Problem for Them
• I Can Move People Like Chess Pieces
• Management Doesn’t Look Difficult From the Outside, So It Must Be Easy
• I Can Compare Teams (and It’s Valuable to Do So)
• It’s Always Cheaper to Hire People Where the Wages Are Less Expensive
• If You’re Not Typing, You’re Not Working
• You Can Manage Any Number of People as a Manager
• People Don’t Need External Credit
• Performance Reviews Are Usefult
• It's Fine to Micromanage
• We Can Take Hiring Shortcuts
• I Can Standardize How Other People Work 
• I Can Concentrate on the Run 
• I Am More Valuable than Other People 
• I Don’t Have to Make the Difficult Choices 
• I Can Treat People as Interchangeable Resources 
• We Need a Quick Fix or a Silver Bullet
• You're Empowered Because I Say You Are
• Friendly Competition Is Constructive
• You Have an Indispensable Employee