On being the one getting hit by the truck

When my company’s former president retired last year, there was a lot of talk about the “Mack truck problem.“

Known also as the “bus problem,” the idea is that some people are so organizationally important that it would be a real issue if they stepped out into the street and got mowed down by a big vehicle. (Why the problem is so violent remains unclear to me—couldn’t it be the trapped-on-Fiji problem, or the eloped-with-their-partner problem?)

Regardless of the fictional situation posed, the problem is worth considering: What if one of your colleague has too much knowledge or expertise bound up within their mind?

I realized, somewhat bashfully—Who, me?—that I am one of these people within my company. So, dutifully, I’m in the strange process of attempting to unburden myself of everything I know before I leave my post in a week and a half.

It’s amazing, though, how entangled knowledge can be. Knowing how to do one thing relies on knowing another, and knowing that second thing means you need to understand how this totally other system works… You get the idea.

It’s humbling, though, to consider the knotty mass of know-how we stumble through life with.