A colleague recently lent me her copy of David W. DeLong's 2004 book Lost Knowledge: Confronting the Threat of an Aging Workforce. It's cheerful and chatty but overall rather thin soup, full of big-business name-dropping and repetitive consultant-speak anecdotes about organizational challenges. Yes, expert employees get old and retire — so what should a boss do about it? After almost 200 pages the "Principles for Action" sub-headings in Chapter 10 suggest:

• Determine Knowledge at Risk

Identify What Knowledge is Critical * Identify Who Has Critical Knowledge or Where It Is * Develop an Attrition Profile

* Build Sustained Organizational Support for Knowledge Retention

Build a Business Case for Investing in Knowledge Retention * Confront Resource Constraints Head On * Overcome Employees' Lack of Time and Motivation

* Which Initiatives to Pursue First?

Triage Knowledge at Risk * Be Clear about the Purpose of Knowledge Retention Efforts * Be Practical about What Leaders Will Support and What the Organization Can Afford * Think Ahead—Retention Is an Ongoing Challenge

Hmmm ... not exactly rocket science. It would have helped to have at least some semi-quantitative models in the text, some discussion of demographics that went beyond average employee age and years to retirement, some systems analysis beyond a quadrant chart, some evidence deeper than stories about the worth (or worthlessness) of knowledge capture information systems. The MIT "AgeLab", which author DeLong is affiliated with, has a similarly-thin web presence. Is this as good as it gets? Maybe I'm missing something ...

^z - 2012-01-13