cover feature
Knowledge
(Transfer)
is Power
HOW TO MAINTAIN BUSINESS
AS USUAL THROUGH WAVES
OF RETIRING BOOMERS AND
OTHER KEY TALENT LOSSES
By Melissa Campeau
It’s her first flight as captain of a commercial airline, but the
young pilot is calm and confident as she runs through the
Boeing 737’s long list of checks. Her steady nerves come partly
from 40 hours of ground school, 65 hours of flight training and
hundreds of hours of flight time. More likely, though, her con-fidence
is the result of 35 hours of in-air coaching, learning the
practical nuances of the job from a seasoned expert.
There are well-studied successors in organizations all over the
country, just like this pilot, gearing up to step into more senior
roles. And with Baby Boomers in business-critical positions
beginning to retire in huge numbers, it’s crunch time for organiza-tions
needing to pair their experts with their “nextperts” to transfer
some of their more essential know-how.
It’s not just retiring Boomers driving this need, either.
Sometimes A-talent will quit after an acquisition, or senior man-agers
get promoted or relocated and leave gaps in their wake or
key people take extended leaves. Whatever the cause, organiza-tions
can often find themselves exposed to significant risk if they
haven’t adequately prepared.
WHAT’S AT STAKE?
“As people who have multiple decades of experience and who
are essential employees leave, they take with them a tremendous
amount of deep smarts – defined as business critical experience-based
knowledge,” said Dorothy Leonard, chief advisor with The
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