Have you ever tried getting somewhere without using Google Maps, Waze, or Apple Maps navigation?

(This is really directed at my 30-and-under people.)

Let's rewind. You need to get to a place you've never been to before, in a neighborhood the town over. What do you do? Pop the address in your mobile phone and follow the way! Off you go.

With the rare exception, your trip is seamless. You arrive where you wanted to go, when you thought you'd get there. And you move on with your day.

Now, there's an experiment I like to try every once in a blue moon. I'll follow almost the same process, but with one key difference. I'll pop the address in my phone, get the directions, and then I'll stop there. I'll study the directions and venture to make it there on my own, without any aid from my phone.

(If you remember the glory days of Mapquest, this won't seem so strange to you.)

Have you ever tried that? Your trip isn't always as smooth, is it?

Sometimes you'll navigate the highway just fine, then get turned around trying to recall those seven little after you exit. ("Was it left at 102nd, then right at 13th, then left at Allen? Or Right-Left-Right? Or am I mixing 102nd and 13th with 103rd and 12th?")

(Full disclosure: this may apply more to me than you. I've always been putrid with directions.)

The trip isn't always as smooth nor as reliable.

This is where documentation comes in.

You are a superstar in your world. You've improved processes, refined your workflow, sharpened your ability to get the same things done more quickly. You're a machine!

You can get from A to B smoothly, reliably, and laser-fast. What's the catch? Only you can do these things. Delegate it to someone else, and they're lost.

You are the driver who knows every shortcut and side street to get where you need to go. That makes you great and valuable, but also perhaps indispensable to a fault. All that knowledge is stuck in your head.

When somebody else tries, they fail. It takes them longer. They never quite get there. They aren't sure whether they can get where they need to go.

You can't scale that way.

When you document processes, you give your teammate the gift of the perfect Google Maps route. They know how long it will take, every turn they need to make, and every shortcut they can use to get there. You can be sure they will get where they need to go quickly and reliably.

Document your processes and you can scale. In other words, you can move onto the next thing knowing that your team won’t miss a beat. Onward and upward you go; they can take it from here.

As a bonus - remember all that stress, puzzling, and heartache you had to go through to create that perfected process you eventually created? You're paying it forward for the next talented person to come along and create new solutions, having already conquered this one thanks to your efforts. In this way you're like an early explorer. This is progress. The kind of world-altering progress we're here for.