A handful of people hold the load-bearing knowledge. If they leave, the system breaks.
A four-sprint diagnostic that maps where critical knowledge lives, who holds it, and how exposed you are if they leave.
- Survey design
- Risk modelling
- Viable Systems Model
The problem in depth
Every leader can name the people who, if they walked out tomorrow, would take a load-bearing chunk of the system with them. Almost none can quantify the exposure across the rest of the org with the same confidence.
The defensive moves available (cross-training, documentation, role redesign) are not free, and applying them blanket is wasteful. Targeted moves require knowing where to target, and that requires evidence, not anecdote.
SkillMap turns that gut sense into a measurable, prioritisable, defensible read on knowledge risk across teams, chapters, and portfolios.
What I deliver
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Knowledge Loss Risk Score
A composite score per team, chapter, and portfolio rolled up using the Viable Systems Model, with parametric drill-down to the drivers behind every score.
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Richter-scale spectrum
A nested visualisation that puts the highest-risk units front and centre and lets stakeholders see the shape of the exposure at a glance.
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Indicator drill-downs
For every flagged unit, the seven-or-so indicators that contributed most to its score, with the survey responses behind them.
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Data-Insight-Action playbooks
For each high-risk hot spot, a tailored intervention plan with prioritised actions, success measures, and rollout cadence.
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Refresh cadence
Re-run on whatever cycle suits you. The score moves, the playbooks update, the conversations stay grounded.
How I work
I design or adapt the survey to your context, run it with the relevant teams, score the results, and walk leaders through the diagnosis before any action plan lands. The output is not a one-shot report. It is a tool you keep using.
Worked example
A bank engineering org of 600 people, post-merger, with concerns about retention in legacy-systems chapters. The diagnostic flagged three chapters in the danger zone. Two of them turned out to be misperceived (resilient, just quiet). The third was real, and the playbook there became the template for the next two cycles.
Knowledge Loss Risk Score, by chapter
Each chapter's score on the same scale, banded by exposure. Drill-down on any chapter exposes the indicators that contributed most.
- Identity & Access 0.21Healthy
- Frontend platform 0.34Healthy
- Data & Analytics 0.46Watch
- Mobile 0.58Watch
- Payments 0.69Elevated
- Trading systems 0.74Elevated
- Legacy core banking 0.86High risk
- Mainframe ops 0.93High risk
Discuss a skillmap engagement.
A 30-minute conversation is enough to know if we should keep talking.