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StrategyDriven Podcast Special Edition 52a – An Interview with Ken Ball and Gina Gotsill, co-authors of Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus, part 1 of 2

StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.

Special Edition 52a – An Interview with Ken Ball and Gina Gotsill, co-authors of Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus, part 1 of 2 explores methods for effectively capturing, retaining, and transferring the knowledge of departing workers thereby enabling those who remain to continue to use this hard-won information to the benefit of the organization. During our discussion, Ken Ball and Gina Gotsill, co-authors of Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus: Capturing Knowledge for Gen X and Y Employees, share with us their insights and illustrative examples regarding:

  • the defining characteristics of Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials
  • why the retirement of Baby Boomers is of particular concern with respect to organizational knowledge retention and which industries are at the greatest risk of knowledge loss
  • the direct and ancillary benefits of knowledge retention programs

Additional Information

Ken and Gina’s book, Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus: Capturing Knowledge for Gen X and Y Employees (Course Technology PTR, Cengage Learning 2010), can be purchased by clicking here.

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About the Author

Ken Ball is a Baby Boomer and has been tracking issues relating to aging in the workplace for several years. At TechProse, he drives business development for the consulting firm that specializes in knowledge/content management, training, and documentation for major U.S. clients. He has more than 30 years of experience in corporate sales and marketing, including years in book publishing business, working for IDG Books, publishers of the …For Dummies computer and general reference books. He has a marketing communications degree from Bradley University.

Gina Gotsill is a Gen X writer who has studied journalism at San Francisco State University and University of California, Berkeley. She is also a fellow of the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank based in St. Petersburg, Florida. Gina has covered a wide range of business topics that include keeping Boomer skills in the workplace, teaching finance to non-finance professionals, and growth and change in urban and suburban business clients.

For more information about Ken Ball and Gina Gotsill and Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus (Course Technology PTR, Cengage Learning 2010), please visit their website www.survivingtheboomerexodus.com.

The Boomers are Leaving! – How to Create and Implement a Knowledge Transfer Program, part 2

Now that you’ve looked at your workforce (in The Boomers are Leaving! – How to Create and Implement a Knowledge Transfer Program, part 1), you’re ready to design and develop a program that retains Baby Boomers’ knowledge. But your program should do more than just capture and transfer valuable knowledge – it should also sow the seeds of a knowledge culture in the organization. More on that later. For now, let’s look at the four phases that will follow the organizational analysis you read about in Part 1. Like rungs on a ladder, each phase builds on the next, so it’s important that you consider each step as you create your knowledge retention program.

Design: During the design phase, you’ll use the workforce data you collected and focus on who holds the knowledge, the recipient, the knowledge you want to capture, and the method you want to use. Some knowledge transfer methods to consider are mentoring, social networks, Communities of Practice, After Action Reviews, and storytelling programs. From this point on, it is critical that you follow the needs of your audience. Regularly ask yourself these questions:


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About the Authors

Ken BallKen Ball is a Baby Boomer and has been tracking issues relating to aging in the workplace for several years. At TechProse, he drives business development for the consulting firm that specializes in knowledge/content management, training, and documentation for major U.S. clients. He has more than 30 years of experience in corporate sales and marketing, including years in book publishing business, working for IDG Books, publishers of the… For Dummies computer and general reference books. He has a marketing communications degree from Bradley University.

Gina GotsillGina Gotsill is a Gen X writer who has studied journalism at San Francisco State University and University of California, Berkeley. She is also a fellow of the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank based in St. Petersburg, Florida. Gina has covered a wide range of business topics that include keeping Boomer skills in the workplace, teaching finance to non-finance professionals, and growth and change in urban and suburban business clients.

For more information about Ball and Gotsill and Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus (Course Technology PTR, Cengage Learning 2010), please visit their website www.survivingtheboomerexodus.com.

Management Observation Program Warning Flag 1 – End of Period and Clustered Observations

Direct management observation and immediate feedback is the best tool for reinforcing performance expectations among employees. And while such reinforcement is optimally effective at maintaining high performance levels when given consistently over time, some management observation programs become a checklist task for executives, managers, and supervisors; resulting in the majority of observations being performed at the end of the observation cycle or in clusters during a narrow time frame within the cycle. Workers learn that standard adhering performance reinforcement only occurs during a very brief period within the cycle and that substandard work will typically not be observed and behaviors corrected the rest of the time. Work behavior quickly aligns with the pattern of expectation reinforcement; sub-optimizing overall performance and adversely impacting the observation program’s effectiveness.


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Loud and Clear: Six Tips for Communicating in a Way That Truly Resonates

In today’s information-packed business world, it is easy to communicate, but it isn’t always easy to be heard. Here’s some advice on how to create messages that people really remember.

Today we are overwhelmed with messages. Some are just 140 characters long. Others are much longer, but they are constantly bombarding us – trying to lure us to acquire and consume information (then repeat the process over and over). Technology – social media specifically – allows for constant communication, but easy communication doesn’t necessarily translate to messages that are received, understood, and capable of driving action.


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About the Author

Nancy Duarte, author of resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences, is CEO of Duarte Design in Silicon Valley, one of the few agencies in the world focused solely on presentations, whether delivered in person, online, or via mobile device. Nancy’s firm has worked with the top brands and thought leaders in the world helping them develop their presentations. She has over twenty years of experience working with global companies and thought leaders and has influenced the perception of some of the world’s most valuable brands and many of humanity’s common causes.

Executive Vision – Building a Global Leadership Brand: Technology

Executive Vision is a five part series created by CNBC and sponsored by Credit Suisse. Within each episode, Melissa Francis, Simon Hobbs, and a group of distinguished guests discuss what it takes to be a visionary leader; guiding their companies to success within the rapidly changing global marketplace.


Distinguished Guests

  • Dr. Jean Botti, Chief Technical Officer, EADS
  • Marissa Mayer, Vice-President, Search Products & User Experience, Google
  • Bill McDermott, President, Global Field Operations, SAP
  • Gerald Quindlen, President & CEO, Logitech
  • Ram Shriram, Founder, Sherpalo Ventures
  • Jimmy Wales, Co-Founder, Wikipedia