InformationWeek

May 4, 1998

Managing That Churning Sensation

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Of course, no amount of communication can get through to an empty chair. Retaining workers is just part of the equation when it comes to managing churn. The rest comes down to preparing for and moving past the inevitable departures. "You're fighting a losing battle if you try to keep people forever, so you've got to get out in front of the parade and lead it," says Stan Davis, a senior research fellow at Ernst & Young's Center for Business Innovation and co-author of Blur . "Some organizations have 20% churn and do fairly well. In that case, I don't see it as a major problem."

One way IS ma nagers deal with churn is to outsource important but finite projects. Imcor, a rent-a-manager division of Norell Temps that places senior-level talent, has found a lot of demand for IT project managers. About 15% of its 300 assignments last year were for IT jobs, another 30% were for jobs strongly influenced by IT; most of the rest required working knowledge of IT systems and functions, says John Thompson, managing director of Imcor, in Stamford, Conn. "We did a warehouse relocation job for a consumer-product company that didn't come to us as an IT project, but really was," says Thompson. "It was all driven off merchandise-tracking methods, so we put in someone who had experience with bar-code and tracking systems."

Outsourcing management may stretch resources, but it also saves companies the pain of unplanned turnover. "Companies can't afford to keep people like us around," says Brijinder Singh, an Imcor consultant now managing a major systems overhaul at a Fortune 50 company. "We'd get bored if we were underutilized."

But what happens when a project ends? One key is making sure the knowledge carried by a temporary manager--or by any departing worker--doesn't evaporate when they leave. Unfortunately, many companies fail to retain expertise when a job turns over. "People talk about knowledge transfer and corporate memory, but I've rarely if ever seen a rational process for capturing knowledge, even at the best-regarded companies," says Singh. "People are always chasing their tails on their own jobs, so they say, `So long, thank you,' or maybe try to grab you for a moment on the way to the plane." Booz Allen's Throckmorton agrees. "All of our clients today have an interest in knowledge bases, but very few have them now," he says. "That's going to be a very important implementation over the next few years--the next wave of consulting."

Start Early
Really capturing knowledge and putting it in a form usable by others takes planning and structure. "You have to do it early on, as part of the exit process," says Singh. "I insist on making it happen as part of my job. I say, `I'm going to write this process down.' I pull people in and get them to focus on articulating what we've been doing and how it should be done in the future."

At Booz Allen, technology is used to pass on knowledge via a keyword-sensitive, browser-based intranet product called Knowledge On Line. It makes information available over the firm's global network on how specific problems have been solved in specific industries, with contact information so employees can get some context by talking to actual human beings. Project teams are kept together long enough to capture the frameworks and other information that is not client-specific about how they did a job. Descriptions are thoroughly "sanitized," so no proprietary client information gets passed on.

A small team of editors then puts the information into easy-to-use form, checks again for "sanitization," and scans it into the system. That way, for exa mple, a young associate in Tokyo trying to figure out derivatives structures could reach anyone in Booz Allen's worldwide offices for help, says Throckmorton. "It presents types of problems, with a listing of names to consult for context," he explains.

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Illustration by Joe Scanfani