Residue Not Retention as a Strategy

Two relatively recent tweets helped formulate my thinking about our mobile workforce.

The first a vision, the second a reality.

"The firm of the future may be ten million people working together for ten minutes" - @EskoKilpi

“Hans: It would be ridiculous for my company to invest in me, where I expect to change job every few years” - @shackletonjones (referencing a speaker’s quote at #LEARN12)

Mobile is an activity, not a technology. We hear much that the average worker will have numerous jobs in his/her life. The number varies depending on the estimator but nobody seems surprised anymore that the number is not 2. Some employees are flying out the door because working in their current company is a fate worse than death but others move on because of a lack of opportunity or bad fit of skills to organization need – not always a harsh criticism of the organization then. The bottom line is that 2 years not 20 is the new normal.

So lets be honest employers, your people are leaving you or you're leaving them. Lets not kid ourselves anymore, it's a revolving door and its only going to continue. No sense in fighting it and desperately trying to hang on with grandiose (and expensive) retention strategies... but then again don't just throw up your hands on trying to "engage" them.  Be human, be compassionate, be fair, compensate accordingly, grant the time deserved to do good work, make it meaningful, give them a say, and hand out "atta boy's" like candy at Halloween. Do this not because you are trying to get them to stay but in the name of sincere appreciation for what they do.  In the end your employee may stick around but even when they don't, they won't exit with a slew of brand destroying tweets either (It's better to have loved and lost...).

As employees continue to pass through like vapor, employers must shift thinking from retention strategies alone to ones that embraces expected attrition. Workers are fluid like the knowledge they consume and expel. You won't hold them for long but what organizations need to do is hang on to their residue.  This residue being the rich artifacts of their time in the organization. I am not talking work product so much as work process; the wiki's they contributed to, the blog posts and comments they made, the quick collaborations and Q&As in micro-blog tools, and the bookmarked (tagged) content. 

As they exit, others enter and the give-n-take cycle begins again. This is where the energy and time should be put. T&D needs to beat their swords (of classes and courses) into ploughshares (for carving out rows and rows of connections). T&D needs to show workers how to plant the seeds and reap the fruits that fuel their labor. HR needs to orient and on-board by introducing employees to a rich culture that invites their contribution. 

T&D should be modeling, encouraging, and sharing Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)  approaches with employees and demonstrating the value of narrating one's work. PKM should be the default approach for all but especially the increasing transient workforce we see today; Make it unavoidable and easy.

Organizations can't stop the transition of employees any more than mankind can stop the sun from rising or the wind from blowing. Mankind has transitioned to embrace and leverage this continual motion. It's a shift for organizations like the shift in energy policy we see today, as nations turn to solar and wind. This type of force strikes and continues on; unconstrained, it briefly turns the blade or fills the cell. The energy though is captured with ample, efficient, and strategically placed tools. This energy is used and then replenished again and again through movement. Organizations too must focus on capturing for brief moments the force of people, as they and their knowledge is in constant motion. 

Networks Fuel "Minn-ovation"

"To be called an innovation, an idea must be replicable at an economical cost and must satisfy a specific need. Innovation involves deliberate application of information, imagination, and initiative in deriving greater or different value from resources, and encompasses all processes by which new ideas are generated and converted into useful products."

                                                  - "Innovation." www.businessdictionary.com 2012. Web. 15 November 2012

Innovation should not always be equated to a grandiose product or service that takes a business to the next level. Rather innovation is more often in the form of micro bursts (which never get the press they deserve) that bring value in even the smallest of situations.


The need for speed

The real winners in the 21st century will be those who can navigate the chaotic and complex quickly. To do this, people must be problem solvers and critical /creative thinkers. Euan Semple (@Euan) in his book Organizations Don't Tweet, People Do made a strong point that an entrepreneur within an organization (Intrapreneur) should work to release Trojan mice - or small uses of social media to garner interest and results. These tools, by expanding connections and collaboration, help to solve problems faster. Furthermore, when people reach outside of their org using social tools to find solutions, they can share their results and the approach helping propel tool adoption; making a stronger case for support of deeper, external networks.


Minn-ovation

Earlier this year a key director sought my assistance in a presentation she was planning.  With only 2 days to go she lacked sound equipment to project her voice to over 40 people and thought I had a quick solution.  I did not.  Rather than pay (a highly inflated) price to rent equipment at the venue she simply wanted to plug a mic into her laptop and project out a set of auxiliary speakers.  The problem was - its not that easy. But could it be done? I set out and took the natural course of action - I dialed up the IT department and discovered that they hadn't a clue.

I then Tweeted the request to my PLN and in about 18 minutes Dave Havis (@dochavis) in the UK replied with a series of tweets on how it could be done as he, using Audacity, had a misstep once and discovered his voice coming through the speakers.   About 20 minutes later he had produced the following for me:

I sent a link to the Director and boxed up a wireless mic and receiver. She set it up, executed the meeting, and it went off perfectly.

The effort was small in a business sense, but innovative none-the-less as it saved time, money, and frustration. And the participants experienced a more effective event. Win-win.  My immediate response for this success was to credit the social tools and the network it fostered as the solution is terminal but the ability to generate solutions in the future - perpetual.

Networks drive continuous minn-ovation and minn-ovation matters. This is how work gets done.

Visualize Real Learning

The Internet Time Alliance always seems to inspire my thinking and remind me of what really matters; from Jane's Pick of the Day to Clark Quinn's mind mapping of keynotes. Mostly though, through their writing, I have had a new vision of organizational learning and I actively spread this in the organizations I support.

Charles Jennings articulated that real learning is all about experience, practice, conversation and reflection. Nothing more, nothing less (see more in his post Mangers and Mad Hatters: Work That Stretches). These 4 key areas are always front and center for me and even have a permanent home in my email signature and on my whiteboard; serving as a lens to look through with every performance issue that comes my way.

I recently stumbled on some work done by Jane Hart's Social Learning Centre, a mind map exercise that included the quote that got me thinking...

Simplifying Learning

it might be a valuable exercise (even more so collaboratively) to dissect the 4 elements Charles noted in a mind map.  For example, one could further breakdown "Experience" with subtopics of  what types of experiences are there? Are some richer than others? Or "Conversation" could have subcategories of synchronous and asynchronous, the nature of what "is" conversation and can this be broken down further into the very elements of conversations that better enable learning? How about "Reflection" as in self and group reflection; effective reflective practices and exercises...

Do you think this would help you -yourself and those in L&D and leadership roles to focus a bit more on the essentials of learning and less on the incidentals that serve to support, extend or augment (i.e. mlearning, elearning, blended learning, etc) learning? Those things that unfortunately seem to dominate the conversation today and in effect distract from the core of what ultimately enables real learning?

If  yes and you'd like to join in this asynchronous exercise with me- then I need your help as I think it would be more meaningful not to go it alone. And of course if this has already been done...then point me to it! Otherwise:

1. We need a collaborative space, preferably a free mind mapping tool (ever use any of these?). Suggestions?
2. A good way to keep everyone involved and allow conversation to help build context. Twitter? G+? Hootsuite? Other?

Looking forward to learning with you!