The Boomers are Leaving! – How to Create and Implement a Knowledge Transfer Program, part 1

The clock is ticking: next year, in 2011, the oldest of the 76 million Baby Boomers turn 65. While that has long been considered traditional retirement age, Boomers are known for bucking the system. Many will decide to stay in the workforce and replenish their savings and retirement accounts. But when they do leave, they will take with them years of institutional knowledge acquired on the job.

Workplace demographics paint a startling picture: Almost 40 percent of the U.S. workforce is between 45 and 64. Many business leaders are beginning to ask some tough questions: who will replace Boomers when they leave? Will younger workers have the knowledge and skills to run our organizations when they do? Companies in many industries stand to lose significant numbers of highly skilled, tenured workers. But that’s not all they’ll lose. After years on the job, Boomers have developed deep, often intuitive knowledge about their company’s way of doing business and the relationships that have made them successful – and much of that could be lost as they walk out the door.


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About the Authors

Ken BallKen Ball is a Baby Boomer and has been tracking issues relating to aging in the workplace for several years. At TechProse, he drives business development for the consulting firm that specializes in knowledge/content management, training, and documentation for major U.S. clients. He has more than 30 years of experience in corporate sales and marketing, including years in book publishing business, working for IDG Books, publishers of the …For Dummies computer and general reference books. He has a marketing communications degree from Bradley University.

Gina GotsillGina Gotsill is a Gen X writer who has studied journalism at San Francisco State University and University of California, Berkeley. She is also a fellow of the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank based in St. Petersburg, Florida. Gina has covered a wide range of business topics that include keeping Boomer skills in the workplace, teaching finance to non-finance professionals, and growth and change in urban and suburban business clients.

For more information about Ball and Gotsill and Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus (Course Technology PTR, Cengage Learning 2010), please visit their website www.survivingtheboomerexodus.com.

Succession and Succession Planning Best Practice 3 – Continuing Education

StrategyDriven Succession and Succession Planning Best PracticeIt is simply not enough that individuals holding senior positions be highly experienced. The narrowness of early career positions and the limitations of time necessarily prevents an individual from being deeply experienced across the full range of functions within the organization. Thus, those relying purely on experience often lack an understanding of the broader spectrum of organization functions and opportunities that would help them be more successful in senior positions requiring multidimensional business understanding.


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Succession and Succession Planning Best Practice 2 – Rotational Development Plans

StrategyDriven Succession and Succession Planning Best Practice ArticleIntegral to every succession plan is the ready supply of qualified talent to replace outgoing position holders. While some talent will come from outside the organization, many should come from within.


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StrategyDriven Succession and Succession Planning Forum

Advancement, transfer, retirement, resignation, and termination are all causes of position vacancies. Regardless of the reason for or timing of a position opening, the organization must continue to function through the subsequent transition. Organizations proactively positioning themselves for personnel changes maintain a higher degree of business continuity; realizing a shallower and shorter productivity dip and pursuing performance improvement more rapidly.

Effective succession and succession planning processes enable smooth transitions of power and operational continuity. Performed well, these processes help ensure the proactive identification and development of an adequate number of candidates to fill potential vacancies, careful selection of the right replacement, thorough preparation of the selectee for his or her new role and organization members to well receive the successor, and advanced provisions to support the entrant with the post transition coaching needed for their and the organization’s success.

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Materials in this forum are dedicated to discussing the leading practices of companies that successfully execute succession and succession planning processes; maximizing the new entrant’s probability of success and the organization’s operational continuity. The following articles, podcasts, documents, and resources cover those topics critical to effective leadership succession.

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Succession and Succession Planning Best Practice 1 – Turnover Checklists

StrategyDriven Succession and Succession Planning Best Practice ArticleEvery position in any company will necessarily be different than even the same position within any other organization. These differences stem from the unique organizational personnel, policies, culture, and marketplace positioning and environment. To be best prepared to assume his or her new role, a successor must have a thorough understanding of all of the position’s critical success factors, drivers, and influencers. Turnover checklists leverage the collective experiences of past position holders to help ensure successors receive all of this vital area knowledge.


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