Last week, I played "Undercover Boss" without the undercover part :) Our office manager, Debbie, was on vacation, so it seemed like a great opportunity to see If someone else could do her job using the notes and documentation she had left.
So I muddled through the week, asking others a lot questions, and taking at least twice as long as our office manager would have taken to do the same job, but I did it, with only a few mistakes.
At Remedi, we frequently get called by customers that have had an EDI Coordinator or Data Integration Specialist suddenly leave their job and they need a consultant to fill in until a permanent resource is found. Obviously, this is a situation you want to avoid, so we recommend job swapping or cross-training or at the very least, documentation, so that someone can fill in without panic.
Although I only did about one-tenth of office manager job, I feel that it was a success, but we'll see the verdict when Debbie returns!