InformationWeek

May 4, 1998

Managing That Churning Sensation

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Booz Allen's knowledge-retention program was recently put to the test. A key employee left the firm after completing an important project for a client. Then the client wanted Booz Allen to duplicate the project in another of its divisions. Fortunately, Booz Allen has a policy of paying team members to spend a week or two after a project is finished entering what they've learned into its Knowledge On Line system. "Our person had left on good terms; he even offered to come in nights or weekends to help us learn what he had done," says Throckmorton. "With the information we had gathered, we didn't even need him to do so."

Write It Down
Nobody is advocating a return to the procedure-bound methods of industrial management. "Every time you figure out a procedure, someone should write it down," says Meyer of Ernst & Young. "But you make it knowledge, not a rigid method. You say, `here's how the last guy did it, now you make it better.' " Information needs to be organized in a useful way, relying on pull--not push--to make it available when and where people need it. "There's no substitute for a person who is a powerhouse," says Meyer. "But passing information along makes a difference."

Another way of building knowledge into an organization is by moving people from job to job--which is what they want anyway. "We have a cultural advantage in our heritage of the Matsushita philosophy," says Panasonic's Schwartz, whose Secaucus, N.J., employer is a division of Japan's Matsushita Corp. "There's not a formal rotation, but there is a lot of moving throughout the operation. It's an intentional w ay of sharing corporate memory, and it's allowed me to bring business knowledge into my group while not spending too much time on a particular individual who may leave." For example, when Schwartz reorganized his group about six months ago, he was able to hire some Panasonic employees who had formerly worked in IT and had gone to a business unit. "I was able to bring them back in with significant responsibilities that made use of their business knowledge." Schwartz says.

Like a basketball coach with a deep bench, IT managers who rotate their talent can substitute workers as needed. "It all comes down to having a backup," says Silvers. "That's your insurance. You try to have somebody else at least aware of what's going on, although there are intricacies of any job that other people won't know."

Even those "intricacies" can be minimized with some planning. "We're not designing spaceships," says Silvers. "We use very standard and well-known software packages. It's not limiting, because vendors give us what we need. We try to use things that have a fairly large number of people trained on them."

Coping with the inevitability of churn also means rethinking relationships with former employees, some of whom may one day work with you again. "There's a continuum of how companies treat people who leave," says Ernst & Young's Davis. "Some close the door and act like those people don't exist. But other companies go the other direction and even have alumni clubs. If you invest a lot on recruiting and training, it makes sense to make them a member of the tribe forever, to maintain links." Corporate security is not likely to be compromised by openness, says Davis: "Paranoia is generally a cultural artifact that has little economic value."

Churn can even have its advantages. "You used to have to motivate your employees for new experiences; today, they come in motivated and seeking new experiences," says Throckmorton. "There are benefits in terms of creativity, teamwork, and problem solving. I' m not sure that's bad." Adds Schwartz of Panasonic: "Zero turnover would bring its own problems."

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Illustration by Joe Scanfani