Success Performance Solutions

Major Sponsor of
2008 Best Places to Work In Pennsylvania

Welcome to the May 28, 2008 issue of The Total View

Published by Success Performance Solutions, Written by Ira S. Wolfe

Visit our Human Resources Blog and Perfect Labor Storm Blog where we can post daily (and more often) human resource updates, news, and Perfect Labor Storm facts. 

What's Inside this issue of The TotalView:

1.  6 Steps to Stop the Brain Drain

Every organization can learn a lesson from British Petroleum. 
 

In February 2006 a small leak from a quarter-inch hole in the Prudhoe Bay pipeline was discovered. By August 2006, oil spills forced a shutdown of the largest U.S. oilfield.  Overnight, 8% of domestic oil production was shut down and hundreds of thousands of crude oil was spilled. 
 

A Congressional investigation followed and it was discovered that BP's senior corrosion engineer retired just a few years earlier.  The job had been left unfilled for more than a year creating a huge knowledge gap. This vacancy, and others, hindered BP's ability to maintain a strategic view of its corrosion prevention activities.
 

Clearly, BP did not document nor retain the knowledge of its senior corrosion engineer. But BP is not unique. Unfortunately poor knowledge management and lack of talent planning is strangling many organization's ability to execute their growth plans. Ask yourself: who is holding the knowledge in my organization that could prevent the "quarter-inch hole" from turning into a disaster resulting in catastrophic loss of customers, suppliers, employees and most important - trust.
 

Stop the brain drain.
 
To begin to capture and transfer knowledge in your organization, where do you start?  I offer the following steps.

1. Identify your subject matter experts and super-experts.  If they were to leave your organization tomorrow and on the way out the door offered to "dump their brains" along with their ID badge and key on your desk, what knowledge would you want them to leave behind?  What questions must you ask if you have any chance of capturing what you need to know?  
2. Be careful what you ask for. A corollary to this brain dump is: what do you do with this pile of knowledge left behind? Just like cleaning out your file cabinets and closets, all the information you find may not be relevant.  You'll likely find that super-experts are mental "packrats."  They keep everything because you just never know when they might need that information. After they are long gone, someone will need to decide what to keep, what to archive, and what to trash.
3. Identify the right recipients.  If you expected that this transferred knowledge will continue to live, the receiver can't just take the "mental" boxes left at his door and file them away for safekeeping.  The successor must take the information and integrate, not just file, it into his or her own knowledge base.  Not everyone has the cognitive capacity, interest, or motivation to do this. 
4. Assess the talent pool.  After you identify the employees who you believe are capable of capturing knowledge, it is essential that you assess them for cognitive capacity and potential.  It is not enough to identify just the smart and ambitious employees. A successful transfer of knowledge will require that the receiving employee(s) have the ability to deal with added levels of complexity, ambiguity and responsibility.  If you're not sure who these recipients are, it is even more important to scan your entire workforce for successors. 
5. Mentor, mentor, mentor.  Now that you've identified your experts and successors, it is time to pair them up. Many relationships will develop naturally. Others will struggle. It takes time to build trust. Many experts have a difficult time communicating at a level that the rest of the world understands.  Some will be reluctant to share their knowledge sensing their value in the organization will diminish once they reveal what they know.  The mentor may need to be coached on how to mentor and the mentee how to learn.  Potential personality rifts must be recognized up-front or the talk of knowledge transfer will remain just that - talk.  The same employee assessments used to identify the right talent can be used to pair the right mentor with the right mentee.
6. Don't plan like you have a tomorrow. Start today. You can plan for retirements but you can't plan for illness, disability, and deaths of key employees and those key employees who leave your flock for greener pastures when you least expect it.  Knowledge transfer at this implicit level takes years, not months or weeks.

2.  Perfect Labor Storm Warnings   

Subscribe to the Perfect Labor Storm 2.0 blog and receive skilled

worker shortage updates like this:

In the next five years, just as the nuclear industry hopes to launch a renaissance, up to 19,600 nuclear workers-35 percent of the workforce-will reach retirement age.  Big energy construction will be booming in the next decade, concentrated in the South-not only nuclear generators but coal plants, liquefied natural gas terminals, oil refineries, and electricity transmission lines. All projects need skilled craft workers, and they are in drastically short supply. The utility Southern Co. estimates that existing energy facilities already are short 20,000 workers in the Southeast. That shortfall will balloon to 40,000 by 2011 because of the new construction.

Source: Worker Shortage in Nuclear Industry

New Perfect Labor Storm videos added. Watch now!

Listen to the Maintenance Worker Crisis

Song now available for easier viewing on YouTube.

Read more about skilled worker shortages in the NEW Perfect Labor Storm 2.0 (soft and hard cover versions)

Now on Sale!  Perfect Labor Storm 2.0 (soft and hard cover versions)  

Order today and save 25%.

NEW Chapters!  Generational Conflicts in the Workplace, Managing the Future Workforce, Attracting Young Employees in a Seller's Job Market plus hundreds of new facts, trends and stats.

View Table of Contents  

Save 25% off retail by ordering now.

Hard Cover: $29.99         Soft Cover: $19.99  

Your Price: $22.49           Your Price: $14.99

To order Perfect Labor Storm 2.0, call 800.803.4303.  Discounts for orders of 10 or more.  Specify hard or soft cover.

3.  Employee Engagement Surveys

Employee Engagement is the level of commitment an employee has towards the organization. The primary behaviors of engaged employees are: speaking positively about the organization to coworkers, potential employees and customers, having a strong desire to be a member of the organization, and exerting extra effort to contribute to the organization's success.

Web based employee surveys are created with simplicity in mind that allows you to design and launch custom employee surveys in order to gather and analyze the feedback from your staff.   

For more information, click here or call 800.803.4303.

4.  New Perfect Labor Storm interview with author Ira S Wolfe

Linda Zumstein, CEO of Sales Success Strategies, LLC recently interviewed author Ira S. Wolfe about how the Perfect Labor Storm is affecting the staffing industry and their clients.  

Listen to the Perfect Labor Storm interview now.

5. NEW!  Leading Others Seminar for supervisors and managers

The Leading Leaders Seminar is an assessment-based management development program. Rather than focusing on a single theory of management, this seminar addresses universal leadership principles as well as key management competencies which support the vision and strategy of the organization.  

The Leading Leaders seminar is designed specifically for managers and executives. The seminar provides comprehensive feedback using our exclusive Leading Others Development Report, an understanding of fundamental leadership principles and key management competencies, and a series of exercises and activities that reinforce essential people management skills.  

Learn more about Leading Others

6.  Managing to Excel for Supervisors

A manager's time is precious. Too often, formal training tries to accomplish too much. Managing to Excel works from the premise that if training is to succeed, learning objectives need to concentrate on just a few key behavioral change goals.  

Excel is a collection of 12 half-day off-the-shelf workshops, each dedicated to the development of a single critical competency. These 12 competencies group in four distinct clusters:

Administrative Cluster: Managing Your Job
Communication Cluster: Relating to Others
Supervisory Cluster: Building the Team
Cognitive Cluster: Thinking Clearly

Learn more about Managing to Excel.

7. Speaking Schedule: Ira S Wolfe

2008:

June 3 - Hiring Tool Kit 101: PreEmployment Tests - Associated Builders and Contractors, Lancaster PA

June 10-11 - Workforce Trends That Will Change the Way You do Business, TEC FL, Pensacola.

September 8 - Electrical Generation Systems Association - "The Perfect Labor Storm"

Watch and listen to Ira speaking about the Perfect Labor Storm

Call 717.291.4640 to schedule Ira for your next meeting or conference.

8.  Hot Off The Press!  "Coming Job Boom" - Buy Today! 

Ira recently collaborated with Bonnie Kerrigan Snyder on a new book, The Coming Job Boom.  Bonnie is the author of The Public School Parent's Guide to Success. The Coming Job Boom is the "ying" for the "yang" of The Perfect Labor Storm.  While the Perfect Labor Storm is beginning to make managers feel like storm chasers looking for qualified workers, high school and college students must be smiling at this Upcoming Job Boom. For those young workers with the right skills and motivation, the job market will make these kids feel like  - well, like kid's in a candy store! 

Order Coming Job Boom today - only $10.95  

Save $2 and shipping costs - download the Coming Job Boom e-book now.  

9. Quotes from Hire Authorities

"Management by objectives works if you first think through your objectives. Ninety percent of the time you haven't."
Peter Drucker 

Permission is granted to consultants, managers, business owners and HR professionals to reproduce content from this newsletter for your internal publications, or to distribute copies to your workforce, on the condition that you reproduce the credits and contact information as follows: "Reprinted with permission from Ira S Wolfe and Success Performance Solutions. Copyright 2008 Ira S Wolfe."  We also hope you will forward the newsletter in its entirety and recommend to others that they subscribe.

Ira S. Wolfe Copyright 2007 - All Rights Reserved. Reprints and other distribution by permission