Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

HAMILTON BEAZLEY, PhD, is chairman of the Strategic Leadership Group and former associate professor of organizational sciences at The George Washington University. Prior to his academic career, he served in various financial and strategic planning positions in the American oil industry and as president of two nonprofit organizations.

JEREMIAH BOENISCH is a communications officer in the U.S. Air Force who has served on the staff of the Office of the Secretary of Defense at The Pentagon. He holds a master's degree in organizational management from The George Washington University.

DAVID HARDEN is a pilot in the U.S. Air Force who has served on the Joint Chiefs of Staff at The Pentagon. He holds a master's degree in organizational management from The George Washington University.

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"How can I keep knowledge from walking out the door when employees leave?" This pressing question is insightfully answered in this landmark book. Operational knowledge has never been more critical to organizational success. Knowledge loss from downsizing, imminent baby-boomer retirements, and high job turnover have created a knowledge continuity crisis that poses an unprecedented threat to organizational productivity and profits. Based on extensive research, Continuity Management solves this crucial problem of knowledge loss for managers at any organizational level by describing an effective strategy for preserving knowledge continuity between employee generations. Revolutionary in its effect, but evolutionary in its practice, continuity management is fueling a new knowledge revolution. This book is about that revolution-and how to lead it.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR CONTINUITY MANAGEMENT

"The book you're holding can help you reverse the tide of 'corporate forgetting.' It explains how to manage the entire cycle of identifying, transferring, and harnessing your company's operational knowledge. And that's key because knowledge continuity is quickly becoming the new competitive battlefield. Tip the balance in your favor by reading this thoughtful book." --Mike Ruettgers, Executive Chairman, EMC Corporation

"This is the first book to examine in detail the loss of knowledge caused by downsizing and turnover and the first to offer a viable solution. This break-through method for maintaining knowledge continuity between employee generations will change the corporate landscape for years to come." --Murray Martin, Group President, Global Mail, Pitney Bowes Inc.

"Continuity management is the missing link in knowledge management that will mean significant increases in productivity and knowledge creation-cutting-edge thinking regarding knowledge as a corporate asset." --Newton F. Crenshaw, Vice President, Eli Lilly and Company, E.Lilly Division

"The concepts presented in Continuity Management, provide essential guidance for how soldiers can leverage the Army's knowledge, so we can adapt to each new fight and win our nation's wars." --Lieutenant General Peter Cuviello, Chief Information Officer, U.S. Army

"This is a topic that is at the top of the list for many organizations and Beazley, Boenisch, and Harden have provided a compelling way to address it in Continuity Management. They 'get it' that the knowledge that employees have is not just individual understanding, but is embedded within a community. Continuity Management is an insightful blend of individual and community responsibility for organizational knowledge." --Nancy M. Dixon, Organizational Knowledge Consultant and author of Common Knowledge

Aus dem Klappentext

"How can I keep knowledge from walking out the door when employees leave?"

This recurring management question, perhaps the most pressing of the Information Age, is insightfully answered in this groundbreaking book. Acute knowledge loss from downsizing and imminent baby-boomer retirements has exacerbated chronic knowledge loss from high job turnover; together, these factors pose an unprecedented threat to organizational productivity, profits, even survival. The loss of knowledge that accompanies an employee's transfer, resignation, termination, or retirement is the single most pervasive and costly source of knowledge mismanagement in corporate America today.

But it doesn't have to be. Continuity Management describes a breakthrough process that transfers operational knowledge from departing employees to their successors. Knowledge continuity initiatives at Pfizer, Deloitte Consulting, EMC Corporation, the U.S. Army, and hundreds of other organizations are already under way. But such initiatives are just the beginning. They herald the sweeping change that continuity management will bring, revolutionizing how leaders manage and companies compete. Continuity management implementation generates decisive competitive advantages: faster ramp-up of new employees, improved customer satisfaction, greater innovation, a sustained commitment to learning, and increased productivity.

Until now, knowledge continuity has been the missing link in the new paradigm that recognizes the organization as a network of thoughts rather than a hierarchy of positions-and knowledge as the force that binds, directs, and vitalizes it. Revolutionary in its effect, but evolutionary in its practice, continuity management is central to the tidal wave that is reshaping organizational knowledge flow and creation in the new century and transforming the way we think about knowledge.

Based on extensive research, this book offers a solution to knowledge loss that managers at any organizational level can use. Continuity management is fueling a new knowledge revolution. This book is about that revolution-and how to lead it.

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Continuity Management

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

Each generation of business leaders has had to deal with a characteristic threat to profitability and, sometimes, survival that came to define their era. War, inflation, depression, stock market collapse, foreign imports, and labor shortages were all serious threats to business enterprises in the past century that had to be countered if those organizations were to survive. The first decade of the new century offers no exception to the litany of threats; it merely adds a new one: knowledge loss. The loss of knowledge from departing employees poses a threat to the productivity and prosperity of contemporary organizations that is equal to the great business threats of the past century. Those organizations that can surmount this challenge by preserving their organizational knowledge base while job transfers, retirements, terminations, and resignations deplete the knowledge base of their competitors will be the business success stories of the century.

Knowledge Workers

Peter Drucker, perhaps the foremost management thinker of our time, coined the term "knowledge worker" in his 1959 book, Landmarks of Tomorrow. In 1994, he predicted that a third or more of the American workforce would be knowledge workers by the end of the century (Drucker, 1994, p. 53), a prediction that he confirmed in 2001 (Drucker, 2001, p. 2). Knowledge workers are the members of the labor force whose skills are primarily intellectual rather than manual. They create and apply knowledge rather than make things. As the defining characteristic of work shifts from repetitive actions governed by strict instructions or simple techniques to unique actions that require complex decision making grounded in understanding, knowledge becomes increasingly important. And more and more people become knowledge workers.

This shift to knowledge work has significantly enhanced the value of knowledge to an organization. As Chapter 2 explains, knowledge is now the primary economic factor in production, a capital asset to be carefully preserved and wisely invested. But knowledge resides largely in the heads of people-people who leave and take their knowledge with them. When knowledge walks out the door with departing employees who have left no "copy" for the organization, the results can be devastating. Mounting knowledge losses can create a knowledge crisis for the organization. In fact, contemporary organizations are facing just such a crisis: an acute threat of knowledge loss from impending baby-boomer retirements and a chronic threat from terminations, transfers, layoffs, resignations, and job hopping.

Acute Threat: The Impending Knowledge Collapse

The generation born in the post-World War II baby boom has had a profound effect on public policy, the workplace, and society at large throughout its life. Between 1946 and 1964, about 75 million children were born in the United States. Today, the baby-boom generation totals approximately 83 million, including those born in other countries but now residing in America. At each stage in its life cycle, this generation has shifted the demand for public services, changed the market for a wide range of products, and altered the nature of the workforce. For nearly 20 years, policymakers, analysts, and social scientists have been concerned about the effect the baby boomers would have on the economy and the nation as they retired.

Technically, the year 2005 marks the beginning of the baby-boom exodus from the workforce. Beginning that year, every seven seconds, another baby boomer will turn 60-and reach retirement age-a process that will continue for the next 18 years. What will these retirements mean? They presage a hemorrhaging of workplace knowledge and knowledge-based experience at a time when such knowledge and experience is increasingly important to the American economy and to the organizations that comprise it.

The Private Sector

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has attempted to estimate the number of baby-boomer retirements that will strike the private sector annually and to identify the most affected industries. The bureau's study indicates, for example, that 19 percent of the baby boomers holding executive, administrative, and managerial occupations are expected to leave by 2008. That's almost 1 in 5 management positions. But some industries will be even harder hit. By 2010, "as many as 60% of today's experienced management personnel will retire from the [oil and gas] industry even if various 'golden handcuff ' incentives are initiated to retain perhaps 20% of them" (Clark and Poruban, 2001, p. 74). The Society of Petroleum Engineers estimates that the industry will lose 44 percent of its petroleum engineers between 2000 and 2010, a loss of 231,000 years of cumulative experience (Kornberg and Beattie, 2002, p. 19). Development Dimensions International, a Pittsburgh-based human resources consulting firm, projects that between 2000 and 2005, some companies (especially large, older companies) will see 40 to 50 percent of their executives retire, a decimation of management that will leave a knowledge void of unprecedented proportions (Geber, 2000, p. 50).

But many baby boomers-particularly in the management and executive ranks-are thinking about retiring before they reach 60, which foreshortens the retirement timeframe and amplifies the retirement threat from the baby-boom generation. According to the John J. Heidrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, 76 percent of the baby boomers would like to retire before they are 50 (working for fun, 2000, p. A1). Deloitte Consulting has discovered that by 2003, nearly one-third of its 800-partner firm will be over the age of 50-and some of the fiftyish partners are talking retirement (Geber, 2000, p. 48). The obvious prediction about the baby boomers is that they will not behave as a group; some will retire early and some will retire late. The sheer number of baby boomers, however, will generate millions of early retirees. Moreover, the general trend toward early retirement means that some of those in the generation following the baby boomers may themselves elect to retire early, exacerbating the effect of baby boomer retirements.

It is possible that estimates of early or "on-time" retirements are exaggerated because of future financial pressures that might force many baby boomers to change their minds about when they will retire. Their longer life spans, for example, might require more funding than retirement income alone can provide if baby boomers are to maintain the high standard of living to which many of them have become accustomed. Or baby boomers may incur extraordinary expenses associated with aging parents that will force them to continue working. Perhaps one of these circumstances will mitigate the threat. Certainly, a broad array of federal policies and programs have been developed or modified over the past several years to encourage baby boomers to remain in the labor force. Changes to the Social Security system, for example, have raised the official age of retirement, laws prohibiting age discrimination in the workplace have been enacted, and changes to pension and benefit regulations have removed many disincentives to continue working beyond age 65.

Even if baby boomers do work later than preceding generations, however, they are...