Should Military and Business Leaders take the position today that anyone is replaceable?

Most companies have the "magic employee" that seems irreplaceable. But the fact is no one is. Or rather, if you allow your company to become so dependent on a single employee that it all comes tumbling down if he/she gets hit by a car or has a heart attack, or simply decides to leave, then you as the owner/CEO have failed in your responsibilities to all the other employees in your company. Can the magic employee never take two weeks off because no one can do what they do?

Of course there will likely be an initial drop off as the new person gets up to speed. But the truth is that the company's future lies in the future, not the past. So a lot of that so called "institutional knowledge" is more of a historical nature than operational. For example, who hasn't taken over a new job in the military, and there is a file cabinet filled with the files of your predecessor. You tell yourself that there must be a ton of invaluable info in there critical to your success. So you vow to read them all soon. But then stuff hits the fan, and you are quickly up to your ass just dealing with today's problems. So the files get put into a box, in order to make room for your folders of "important" stuff.

Before you know it, a couple of years have passed. You never got around to reading those files. They have sat in a corner as you filled up the file cabinet. Now your orders come down for a new job! You go through your file cabinet, keeping all those papers that you are sure your replacement just MUST know about. And off you go. Your boss pins a medal on your chest and tells everyone that he cannot imagine how things will be without you. You were such a rare and special snowflake.

A new guy sits in the desk, looks at the file cabinet, and vows to read through them all quickly. He sees a box in the corner that doesn't look like it's been touched in years, and throws it out to make room for a coat rack. But then as he gets swamped with work, he takes out your files that were SO vital to you, and puts them in a box in the corner, removing the coat rack, so he has room for his files of the REALLY important stuff.

Next thing you know, two years have gone by, and someone asks "what was the name of that guy who had your job two guys ago?" No one in the office remembers, but one old timer says he thinks he was a really good guy.

And the beat (and the mission) goes on.

Individual people are one of a kind COL Mikel J. Burroughs and are not replaceable. Try telling parents who have lost a son or daughter that they could simply have another one to replace them and be prepared for an outburst of anger and grief.
That being said most businesses and the military services work on the principle that individual service members are replaceable for the tasks and missions they are responsible to perform. Training, experience and assessments are shuffled to develop service members while meeting the needs of the organizations they are assigned or attached to.
Even the President of the nation is replaceable every 4 to 8 years. Nobody should be indispensable to an organization.
LTC Stephen C. Capt Seid Waddell CW5 Charlie Poulton CW5 (Join to see) SFC Joe S. Davis Jr., MSM, DSL SSG James J. Palmer IV aka "JP4" SSgt (Join to see) SSgt Robert Marx TSgt Joe C. SGT (Join to see) SGT Robert Hawks SGT Robert George SGT John " Mac " McConnell SGT Forrest Stewart SP5 Mark Kuzinski SrA Christopher Wright SPC (Join to see) SPC Margaret Higgins

You can't be irreplaceable in business. The trick is being hard to replace.