Hello everyone. If this is not the right place for it, sorry mods. 😞

I've been working as a Service Level Manager for about a year now in a mid-sized software company. I came from a completely different background (10 years in logistics/operations, where 2 were as DA and 5 as a team lead in a quality dept, where my strong point was internal process analysis: finding flaws, correcting and improving them), having no formal ITSM education, and three months into the role, my manager (experienced with more than 6 years in the role) just resigned. It took nearly a year to find his replacement.

My onboarding was what it could be given the circumstances: my manager did what was possible before leaving, and my colleagues also supported me at the start, but the timing meant I was largely on my own early on. I got my ITIL 4 Foundation certification during this period, which helped with the theory, but the institutional and contractual knowledge is a completely different set.

A year in, I still feel like I'm constantly behind. My two colleagues have more experience and relevant educational backgrounds, and when questions come into the department, it's almost always them who answer, not me. I can mostly follow their reasoning when they do, but in the moment I freeze.

I know I'm not incompetent: I handle what comes to me; I know when to say, "I'll check and confirm"; I get answers when I ask; I check documentation; and I back all my answers, and as far I am concerned, no feedback nor corrections were done, and no issues arose after my input. But the knowledge doesn't seem to stick. There's no system; it lives in my memory or scattered emails (marked as tasks so I won't lose them).

Has anyone been in a similar situation?