> Knowledge workers aren't cogs, they're part of a team. You shouldn't expect that you can easily find replacement people with exactly the same skillset and pro

> Knowledge workers aren't cogs, they're part of a team. You shouldn't expect that you can easily find replacement people with exactly the same skillset and propensity as someone else to make up the gap that an absence makes in a team. Nor should you expect that the proper way to grow a team is by cloning the skills of some other existing member of the team. A team works cooperatively, and their skills, talents, experience play off one another to gel together into some sort of mechanism that is capable of doing stuff. Great comment, I totally agree that taking a wholly mechanistic view of how individuals and teams work is an error. You can't account for all the 'magic' that make some teams function in ways that are more than the individual parts. Of course, you're striking at an underlying fear for managers. Our jobs are to make things work immaterial of the individuals: positively a managers job is to make the system of people/process/systems work, and negatively to make sure that no individual should be so indispensable for the project/department/organisation. This mechanistic view generally works because most roles are 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration, as the saying goes. Perhaps a good mix is that when a hole is created in the team, to look at the situation holistically. As the short-list of candidates is drawn-up consider how they could fit into the mix, and how they would be additive - not the same as previously, but a new opportunity - like a new ingredient, rather than a replacement cog. It reinforces the idea of having more peers from the group involved in the hiring as this could open up a range of opinions on how the mix could change.