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Staff Transition - Problem of Opportunity?

Written by: Larry Mandelberg

Article Overview: The relationships, knowledge and experience that reside in the minds of staff are what make an organization. Yet turnover is a constant in doing business, and maintaining that talented, knowledgeable team is a factor leader’s deal with daily. People get bored, lose focus, and feel unchallenged or under appreciated. When staff moves on, you often lose your best and brightest. How do you capture the knowledge they have accumulated, retain relationships they have developed, and transfer the skills they have mastered? Do you look for someone to replace them or is this a good time to look at organizational structure and re-evaluate job responsibilities? When a staff member leaves, is it an opportunity or a problem?

Staff Transition - Problem of Opportunity?

As critical as a leader is to an organization, without a team of talented, knowledgeable people behind them, there would be no company. The relationships, knowledge and experience that reside in the minds of staff are what make an organization. Yet turnover is a constant in doing business and maintaining that talented, knowledgeable team is a factor leader’s deal with daily. In these times of perpetual change fueled by technology and the internet, if leaders aren’t preparing for transition, they are courting adversity.

People get bored, lose focus, and feel unchallenged or under appreciated. When that happens, whether driven by retirement or the need for change, when staff moves on, you often lose your best and brightest. How do you capture the knowledge they have accumulated, retain relationships they have developed, and transfer the skills they have mastered? Do you look for someone to replace them or is this a good time to look at organizational structure and re-evaluate job responsibilities? When a staff member leaves, is it an opportunity or a problem?

Though the fore mentioned question is problematic in many ways, the answer is yes to both. Issues and opportunities are two sides of the same coin. What matters is the attitude and how the leader chooses to prepare for these inevitable changes. Loss of senior staff due to the baby boomer retirement is a hot topic in business and government, but few companies are taking the necessary steps to mitigate their risk.

Maureen Gorsen, Director of the California Dept. of Toxic Substances Control is currently facing this situation. “We hired a lot of people between 1984 and 1987. All those people who really understand the issues of hazardous waste and know how to clean up sites are about to retire. How can we get a Vulcan mind meld of the institutional knowledge to occur? “

She goes on to explain that the remaining staff is ”…not used to thinking for themselves or analyzing, they are used to following instructions and implementing someone else’s plan.” Most civil service entities must deal with another complication: The disparity between private sector wages and public service.

Rather than fighting a losing battle, Gorsen took a step back and analyzed the situation, looking for ways to change more than just staff. Her analysis produced an excellent alternative. Rather than focusing on clean up, Gorsen’s department is targeting a whole new area, manufacturing and the sources of toxic waste. “Now that we are moving up the chain towards the design of products, we can broaden the set of skills and areas (we need to recruit) so more people are attracted to coming to work here.”

Alan Weiss Ph.D., author of Million Dollar Consulting tells a story about a utility client he worked with some years ago. The utility made significant strides in technology and became much more efficient leaving them staff heavy.

Management‘s first thought was to offer early retirement. When Weiss researched the strategy he found that “every high-wire rigger in the company would have left. They climbed poles during ice storms, and technology would never have been able to do that! It would have shut the company down.”

Weiss made an excellent point on this issue. “If enough good people that deal with your customers leave, even the largest firms can be shut down.” underscoring the critical nature of succession planning and being prepared for tomorrow today.

For any number of reasons businesses lose staff from time to time. Companies preparing for that transition will survive the change. In fact, preparing for this inevitability best positions them to use these transitions to re-evaluate their organization and its structure, to change roles and responsibilities, to adjust systems and structure, to adapt and prepare for new ways of doing business. In doing so, they will position themselves as the type of organization tomorrows talent will focus on when seeking their careers.

Business today is a moving target. Constant change and the unbelievably fast pace in which we operate magnifies mistakes and makes recovery more difficult. Strategic planning and critical thinking are mandatory for today’s leaders. One of the most intelligent steps you can take as an organizations leader is to examine your company objectively. Evaluate the positions and areas most vulnerable. Look for ways to cross train, update operations, and make the organization a more desirable place to work. If not, you may be out looking for a job yourself in the not too distant future.

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Larry Mandelberg is a Member of Beyond Point B, a business coaching and leadership development company in Northern California. He can be reached at larry@beyondpointb.com or (916) 787-9909

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Article Tags: California Dept of Toxic Substances Control, company, Maureen Gorsen, organizational structure, retirement, retirement, technology, technology



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