How to extract knowledge from a retiring business owner with no records
Fifty years of handshake deals and a total lack of computer records mean critical operational knowledge and customer relationships live entirely inside the owner's head. Extracting this information requires careful, deliberate work to map out unwritten processes before the owner leaves.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1keeping the former owner on-site to run operations and handle customers
- 2digitizing historical paper invoices to uncover true customer volume
- 3quietly building modern parallel systems while letting the founder run things
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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- 2Why is it so hard to pull accurate reports out of enterprise software?
- 2How do I deal with a 50/50 business partner who does no work?