Change in project roles and project leaders happens. When it happens, how do you prepare to pass on what you know to the next person who needs to handle it?

It's easy to remember to pass on the written documents you work with regularly, or to point them at the folder of project materials on the file server.

It's harder to remember to share the implicit knowledge—the unwritten stuff that guides project work but usually goes unwritten, maybe even unconscious.

Case in point: I was recently on a team that had a sizable conflict because no one communicated to an incoming leader the entire list of people who were traditionally given a particular benefit he oversaw. This sticky situation was completely avoidable, had someone remembered to tell the new leader: he could have arranged a clear communication to beneficiaries that the policy had changed, or he could have made room in the budget to welcome everyone. Either would have been preferable to the misunderstandings and hard feelings that took place before anyone figured out what had happened.

So how do you share that unwritten knowledge?

• Try to write or talk out the steps in the process for someone who is unfamiliar with them?
• Make a list of others who can mentor or assist for the new people to contact with questions? It's certainly easier to deal with an unexpected situation when you know who to ask for help.
• Arrange to work together before job transitions happen, so the new people can soak up the unwritten/unconscious knowledge for themselves and experience the project cycle from the point of view of their new position?

What else? What do you do?