Ask Slashdot: How To Turn an Email Stash Into Knowledge For My Successor?

VoiceOfDoom writes: I'm leaving my current position in a few weeks and it looks unlikely that a replacement will be found in time. My job is very specialized and I'm the only person in the organization who is qualified or experienced in how to do it. I'd like to share as much of my accumulated knowledge with my successor as possible but at the moment, it mostly exists in my email archive which will be deleted after I've been gone for 90 days.

The organization doesn't have any knowledge management systems so the only way it seems I can pass on this information is by copying all the info into a series of documents, which isn't much fun to do in Outlook. Can my fellow Slashdotters can suggest a better approach? By the way, there's quite a lot of confidential stuff in there that my successor needs to know but which cannot leave the organization's existing systems.

Comments

.pst?

[WillgasM]

Just export a .pst file of all your emails and import into your successor's outlook. Keep the file for backup.

Re:.pst?

[Spy Handler]

also you can convert the .pst into html and put it on the company intranet if that's more palatable.

https://www.google.com/webhp?h...

Well ...

[gstoddart]

You can print them. You can forward them. You can paste them into a document and pass them on.

Or you can realize that if the company doesn't care enough to have a replacement hired, or a system in place to store this knowledge ... they either don't know or don't care enough to plan for this.

Ask your manager, if his response is "gee, I don't know, I'll get back to you" ... well, then it's their damned problem.

Wanting to make transition is a nice thing, but at a certain point, your employer also has to take ownership of that process.

At a certain point, hand holding your employer through such things isn't really your problem.

Re:Well ...

[Beorytis]

if the company doesn't care enough to have a replacement hired, or a system in place to store this knowledge ... they either don't know or don't care enough to plan for this.

I almost took this attitude the last time I changed jobs, but I realized it wasn't to help the company as a whole or my manager. It was for my immediate colleagues and juniors who would have to fill in. They were the ones who could make the most use and who appreciated the extra transition effort.

Consulting

[Rogue974]

1) Do your best to store it where it won't get deleted
2) Sign an agreement with them on your billing rate if they call you for help
3) Don't look back unless they call

This should be SOP. BTW, they usually don't call.

Re:Consulting

[nine-times]

I agree mostly. Sort of.

The problem with it, if I'm being honest, is that I want to do a good job. I don't want to screw things up for my employer, especially if I have a decent relationship with them. So if they say, for example, "Hey, go ahead and delete these files," and I know those files are very important, I'm not going to just delete them without saying anything, wait for them to discover the problem, and then say, "Well you told me to do it!" I'm going to give them a big warning that they've just asked me to do something stupid. I may even fight them on it a bit.

Now if they absolutely insist that I delete important information, I might go ahead and do it. I'd probably say, as the last thing I do before deleting it, "Just to be clear, I'm doing this at your request, overriding my own objections." I might even put that in writing.

To me, that kind of conscientiousness shouldn't end when you start planning to leave your company. So in that vein, I agree with you, with the assumption that you're also informing the employer what you're doing, and making it clear why you're doing it. Tell them, "I'm saving these documents here. These are important for my successor. I don't recommend deleting them, since then my successor may have trouble doing [whatever]. Would you prefer that I store them anywhere else?" If they ignore that and delete the files, then that's their own fault, and you charge consulting fees for helping them.

I also agree that they probably won't hire you on as a consultant. No matter how indispensable you are, the graveyards are full of indispensable men.

Re:Consulting

[ShanghaiBill]

BTW, they usually don't call.

The reason they don't call is that really special people are usually no where near as special and indispensable as they think they are. 80% of what they were frittering their time away on wasn't worth doing in the first place, and the remaining 20% can be streamlined and done faster/cheaper/better by their replacement, using their own methods.

This is your manager's problem

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> I'd like to share as much of my accumulated knowledge with my successor as possible

Don't worry about it unless your manager told you to do so. (Your manager knows you're leaving right? And you've told your manager that there might be useful info your email, right?)

>> The organization doesn't have any knowledge management systems

Don't worry about this either. These are all overrated and highly ignored by most organizations that own them anyway.

Not Your Problem

[mrun4982]

Don't bother with this unless your manager asks. It's their problem to ensure your replacement can do the job. No offense intended, but it sounds like you're making yourself sound more important than you really are. While I'm sure you are a hard worker and did your job very well, I've never ran into a situation where a company was SOL when any one particular person left. However, I've known lots of people who thought they were the only ones who knew how to do their job. In the end, it always turns out that the company does just fine and has no problem filling the role. If you really are that important to the company, then offer to help them out at a respectable contract rate; They won't call though.

Let's turn the question around!

[tlambert]

Let's turn the question around!

Hi.

I'm an employer who intends to fire someone, but they don't know it yet, and I don't want to clue them into it by bringing in their successor ahead of time, for fear of what their reaction might be, or what they might delete.

I have access to all of their company email, since it's stored on a central server, and I want to know how to turn this stash of email into a set of useful instructions for their successor.

Can anyone help? It's really annoying when there is someone in a critical position that you hate enough that you want to get rid of them, and they hate you enough that you can't trust them to "play nice".

Does that about sum up the actual situation?

Re:Okaaay.

[Anonymous Coward]

The reality is that you, the person leaving, are the only one who has this on their radar. Management doesn't know what you do, doesn't have a plan for when you leave, and will not ask you for help down the line. So while it's commendable, it's not going to amount to a hill of beans no matter what you do.

CAPTCHA: realist

Re:.pst? probably doesn't matter

[petes_PoV]

Whatever format you dump it in, it's unlikely that your successor will bother reading through it. Either they will be skilled up in whatever it is you were doing and will spend the first few weeks slagging off your name for not leaving any coherent documentation (a not unreasonable option: look! all he left was a pile of emails! It'll take months to make head or tail of all that crap!), or the company will recruit someone who hasn't a clue and will re-invent the basic functions. Or (more likely) your company will dump the whole thing and realise that there are other ways of doing what you did. Ways that are both supportable and easy to recruit people to do.

Re:Okaaay.

[rhook]

Management may very well ask for help in the future. At which point you tell them "$200/hour, 4 hour minimum".

Re:Okaaay.

[VoiceOfDoom]

Kinda harsh - I don't think of myself as any kind of snowflake and we're not talking about technical IT knowledge here but understanding of privacy law and how it applies to a pretty unique non-profit health and social care organisation.

No doubt any other data protection expert can come in and suss it all out - just thought it might benefit the organisation if the learning curve for the new bod were a little less steep.....

Re:Okaaay.

[Kjella]

This, right here. Your obligations end the moment they stop paying you. Anything else is free labor on your part.

Of course it does. But as long as I'm getting paid I will act professionally and loyally to my soon to be ex-employer, unless I got reason to feel stabbed in the back anyway. It's not like I waited for things to crash and burn then tell my boss "You didn't tell me to do anything about it" before, so I wouldn't be that way in my resignation period either. If they'll listen is another matter, but pretty soon that won't be my problem. It's not really about that company's future, I do it because if I cross paths with my boss or colleagues later they might have a more positive opinion of me.

It certainly can't hurt and whether my boss deserves it or not isn't really relevant, I might think he's a short sighted and ignorant PHB but that doesn't preclude him from being involved in a hiring decision about me. I know for a fact that companies look for current employees that have a shared work history with you and ask their opinion of you, since that way they get a reference you don't control. It of course depends on your field of expertise and mobility, but it's usually hard to avoid having a reputation so best to make it a good one. Unless you really need to burn those bridges and rise from the ashes.