Lesson 10 - If it Needs a Hero, It's Not Automated
If a process only works because one person “knows how to make it work,” automation hasn’t happened. At best, you’ve built a workaround. At worst, you’ve concentrated risk in a single human being.
Hero-dependent workflows are fragile by nature. When that person is unavailable, work slows or stops entirely. When they leave, institutional knowledge walks out the door with them. What looks like efficiency on the surface is actually a single point of failure hiding in plain sight.
Organizations often confuse experience with automation. A long-tenured employee who can navigate exceptions, remember unwritten rules, and manually correct issues may keep a process moving, but that doesn’t make the process healthy. It makes it vulnerable. Automation should remove the need for heroics, not depend on them.
True automation is boring, and that’s a compliment. It runs quietly in the background. Decisions are predictable. Exceptions are documented and visible rather than handled through backchannels or memory. When something goes wrong, it’s clear where and why.
Designing for this level of reliability requires intentionally eliminating tribal knowledge. If success depends on someone remembering which step to skip or which email to send, the workflow needs redesign, not more training. Training can teach people how to use a system, but it can’t safely replace logic that should be enforced by automation.
Across industries, organizations that prioritize resilience over heroics build systems that scale. New staff can step in without fear. Managers can trust outcomes without constant oversight. Automation becomes an asset rather than a liability tied to specific individuals.
Automation should reduce reliance on people’s memories, availability, and goodwill. When it does, the organization becomes more stable, more scalable, and far less exposed to disruption.
If your automation still needs a hero, it’s time to redesign, not celebrate the hero.
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