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StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 52b – An Interview with Ken Ball and Gina Gotsill, co-authors of Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus, part 2 of 2

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StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Special Edition 52b – An Interview with Ken Ball and Gina Gotsill, co-authors of Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus, part 2 of 2 explores methods for effectively capturing, retaining, and transferring the knowledge of departing workers thereby enabling those who remain to continue to use this hard-won information to the benefit of the organization. During our discussion, Ken Ball and Gina Gotsill, co-authors of Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus: Capturing Knowledge for Gen X and Y Employees, share with us their insights and illustrative examples regarding:

  • the characteristics of a good knowledge retention program
  • how to identify those individuals whose knowledge should be captured and retained
  • how to identify when someone is likely to retire, including the legal and ethical restrictions surrounding such activities
  • overcoming employees’ fear of personal value loss when sharing their hard-won knowledge
  • actions leaders should take to ensure captured knowledge reaches those who need it in a way and at a time that makes it useful to them
  • how a knowledge retention program’s return on investment and overall programmatic success can be measured

Additional Information

Ken and Gina’s book, Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus: Capturing Knowledge for Gen X and Y Employees (Course Technology PTR, Cengage Learning 2010), can be purchased by clicking here.

Final Request…

The strength of our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. Please consider rating us on iTunes by clicking here. Rating the StrategyDriven Podcast and providing your comments online improves our ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, helps us grow our community.

Thank you again for listening to the StrategyDriven Podcast!

About the Author

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:53 — 32.8MB)

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StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 52a – An Interview with Ken Ball and Gina Gotsill, co-authors of Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus, part 1 of 2

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StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Special Edition 52a – An Interview with Ken Ball and Gina Gotsill, co-authors of Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus, part 1 of 2 explores methods for effectively capturing, retaining, and transferring the knowledge of departing workers thereby enabling those who remain to continue to use this hard-won information to the benefit of the organization. During our discussion, Ken Ball and Gina Gotsill, co-authors of Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus: Capturing Knowledge for Gen X and Y Employees, share with us their insights and illustrative examples regarding:

  • the defining characteristics of Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials
  • why the retirement of Baby Boomers is of particular concern with respect to organizational knowledge retention and which industries are at the greatest risk of knowledge loss
  • the direct and ancillary benefits of knowledge retention programs

Additional Information

Ken and Gina’s book, Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus: Capturing Knowledge for Gen X and Y Employees (Course Technology PTR, Cengage Learning 2010), can be purchased by clicking here.

Final Request…

The strength of our community grows with the additional insights brought by our expanding member base. Please consider rating us on iTunes by clicking here. Rating the StrategyDriven Podcast and providing your comments online improves our ranking and helps us attract new listeners which, in turn, helps us grow our community.

Thank you again for listening to the StrategyDriven Podcast!

About the Author

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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:17 — 38.9MB)

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The Boomers are Leaving! – How to Create and Implement a Knowledge Transfer Program, part 2

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Now that you’ve looked at your workforce (in The Boomers are Leaving! – How to Create and Implement a Knowledge Transfer Program, part 1), you’re ready to design and develop a program that retains Baby Boomers’ knowledge. But your program should do more than just capture and transfer valuable knowledge – it should also sow the seeds of a knowledge culture in the organization. More on that later. For now, let’s look at the four phases that will follow the organizational analysis you read about in Part 1. Like rungs on a ladder, each phase builds on the next, so it’s important that you consider each step as you create your knowledge retention program.

Design: During the design phase, you’ll use the workforce data you collected and focus on who holds the knowledge, the recipient, the knowledge you want to capture, and the method you want to use. Some knowledge transfer methods to consider are mentoring, social networks, Communities of Practice, After Action Reviews, and storytelling programs. From this point on, it is critical that you follow the needs of your audience. Regularly ask yourself these questions:
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  1. Who will receive the knowledge?
  2. What are their preferences?
  3. What knowledge do they need to succeed in the organization?

During the design phase you will also establish the goals and objectives of your program. An example of a goal for a mentoring program could be that mentees will be more confident and knowledgeable when interacting with clients. An objective, on the other hand, should be measurable. An example of an objective for your mentoring program could be that after the first three months, a mentee will be able to complete a critical task in half as much time as they did before being mentored.

Development: During development, you will create all the materials you’ll use for your program, which could include sign-in sheets, handouts, check lists, templates, and websites. Before you launch the program in a big way, we recommend you test drive it with a small group of representative users first. While many organizations roll out their programs without a pilot, our experience has shown that this can backfire. Pilots give you the opportunity to test – and tweak – elements of your program while it’s early. This increases your chance of meeting the goals and objectives you noted during the design phase. We recommend you pilot each element of your program, from the sign-in sheet to the evaluation form to the website where participants enroll in the program.

Implementation: You’ve designed your program, tested it, and now it’s ready for prime time. Make sure you have a project manager in place to mind the details and ensure the program doesn’t veer off course. While it may be tempting to launch your program and move on to other tasks, remember that successful programs require maintenance and attention.

Evaluation: Managers who skip the evaluation phase may discover their program loses relevance if they don’t check in from time to time. To keep your program humming along, look at it from many different angles at regular intervals. Quantitative measures, such as attrition data, employee performance data, and program attendance rates give you the numbers you may need to defend your program to executives. And qualitative data, such as customer comments and user surveys, provide anecdotal information that helps you paint a more complete picture.

Now what? Your knowledge retention program has helped you prepare for the inevitable day when experienced Boomer workers begin to step away. But you’ve also set the foundation of a knowledge culture, where every member of the team contributes what they know for the benefit of the organization. Now that your program is off the ground, you must nurture this new culture – experienced workers, whether Boomer or Gen X or Y, leave the organization every day. Nurturing a culture that is more collaborative can help make knowledge transfer a part of how your organization runs. This is a good thing! All you need is a plan…[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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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.

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

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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.

[wcm_restrict]You may find yourself reading this and saying, “So what?” The world of business has changed since Boomers appeared on the stage as self-assured, optimistic employees and managers. Technology has exploded, giving us instant access to information and knowledge, and it all moves and changes so fast that some of what Boomers have learned during their careers may be obsolete. Still, there are potentially alarming downsides when essential employees leave.

Consider this: a survey of America’s utilities (your local gas and electric company) found that 40 to 50 percent of workers in key positions will become eligible to retire or are expected to leave in the next five years. Some industry experts believe there won’t be enough qualified workers to run our utilities, which could threaten the industry’s ability to provide safe, stable, and reliable power.

What’s a manager or executive to do? Start by taking small bites of the problem and build a knowledge retention program that is sensible to initiate and paves the way for quick successes that will encourage senior management sponsorship. Assemble some preliminary data:

  • What are the demographics of your organization?
  • What are your employees’ retirement plans?
  • How do your organization’s strategic and operational goals inform what work roles will be needed in the future? Who will do this work?
  • What skill competencies are required to remain competitive and how do these map to critical roles and specific employees in those roles?
  • What is the historic attrition and turnover rate and how do these map to the skills that keep you competitive?

Once you’ve gathered this data, you can begin to assess the gaps that you might see in your workforce as longtime employees and managers step away. This is also an excellent time to begin planting the seeds of a knowledge culture – an environment where every member of the team enthusiastically shares what they know for the benefit of the organization. While impending Boomer retirements represent the immediate issue, developing a knowledge culture is a best practice that serves an organization well when any employee leaves.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]

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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.