How the technical writer kills off the heroes
The technical writer brings knowledge and repeatable processes to the workplace. Once you have (good) documentation, it doesn’t matter if the person who normally does the work is sick, or on holidays, their back-up can use our documentation to do what needs to be done.
I first came across the term ‘hero’ back when we were setting up process improvements using the Capability Maturity Model (CMM). [CMM has since been replaced with CMMI.]
It’s the first stage of process improvement. You start off with ‘heroes’ who know a system or process well and are the only ones who can use it.
There are no reference materials. If you need something done, or anything goes wrong, you call in the hero.
The work hero often sacrifices their home life in their selfless devotion to the job. Even when they are sick, they struggle in to work, because they are the only ones who can do a particular task.
The sad fact is, workplaces don’t want heroes.
No matter how much the ‘hero’ does for the company, no matter how many sacrifices they make, all their heroism does is damage the company, by making it dependant on a single point of failure.
An ideal workplace has no heroes at all.
To get past the hero stage, a company needs repeatable processes. Processes anyone can do, not just the hero.
How do you ensure a process is repeatable? You document it.
Who documents it? That’s often the technical writer. (Or occasionally the hero themself.)
Once a process is documented, the hero is no longer a hero, they’re just another cog in the workforce. The company likes it that way.
What if you are the hero though? You’re indispensable to the company, right?
Wrong.
A company that relies on heroes is in trouble. If they’re any good as a company they’ll eventually drag themselves out of that trouble by setting up some repeatable processes. Otherwise they’ll go broke.
As the old saying goes, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Accept that the only long-term harm you are doing is to yourself, by sacrificing your life to the company, and do something about it.
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