Few things test an HR leader faster than a two-week notice from the one person who knows how most things work!

Years ago, a payroll specialist who had been with us for well over a decade turned in her notice in the middle of October. We were genuinely happy for her, because she had earned the new opportunity, and then someone asked who would handle the year-end tax reconciliation. She had done it every year and done it well, and nobody else had ever watched closely enough to do it without her.

She was gracious about it and spent much of her last two weeks writing down what she could, but two weeks is not long enough to hand over her years of knowledge and how she made decisions when non-traditional situations occurred. We got through year-end with her personal cell number, a lot of patience on her part, and a fair amount of overtime on ours.

You know what? Every team has someone like her. They are usually among the most dependable people you have, which is exactly why the risk doesn’t surface until it is late in the game. Why? Because the work gets completed when needed, nobody complains, and the we only learn how dependent we are on them when that person is out sick, on vacation, or gone for good.

Lucky for you, you are reading this newsletter because AI can help you find these dependencies before a resignation happens. Give it a list of your team's key tasks, systems, relationships, and recurring decisions, along with who handles each one and who could step in, and it can show where a single person stands between your team and a missed deadline. It can also rank those gaps by how often the work happens and how much trouble a gap would cause.

The conversations that follow are yours to handle with care. People can feel uneasy when you ask what only they know, so how you frame the exercise matters as much as what the map shows. Handled well, it comes across as appreciation for their expertise and a plan to protect it.

Today's AIQ Brief helps you find the work that depends on one person and decide which gap to close first.

Let's go raise your AIQ.

Every Master Prompt in AIQ with Paul is written as an AIQ Brief. Each section answers a question AI needs answered before it can do good work for you.

Context tells AI what the situation is and who the work is for. Intent says what the result must accomplish, and Constraints list what cannot change or is off limits. Output describes what good looks like, and Check names what AI should show you and what you will verify before you use the result.

Fill in the brackets, run the brief, and treat the Check section as your to-do list once AI responds.

Take your skills beyond the brief. In my AIQ Advantage™ program, I teach working professionals how to build briefs into reusable workflows, check AI output before it goes out under their name, and decide where AI fits in their work. Learn more at AIQAdvantage.com

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