The CEO of a large non-profit recently recognized her organization was at risk of losing lots of critical knowledge and relationships because many of its 50 most senior leaders are approaching retirement.  Top managers in this geographically distributed environmental non-profit have long standing personal relationships with key donors in their region.  And it was hard to predict how their retirements would impact donor relations.  In addition, many leaders have deep expertise in scientific and legal domains where the agency has built its reputation. What would be the impact on public support for its programs if this knowledge was lost to retirement?

To address these challenges, I helped this agency implement a four-step process that would minimize the effects of retirements on the organization’s future performance.

1. Raise Awareness  — Working with the CEO, I facilitated a half-day retreat with the agency’s top 50 leaders to start a dialogue about the retirement problem and the risks it posed for future performance.  This made the problem discussable among managers, and led to important one-on-one conversations with key individual about their retirement plans.

2.  Prioritize Capabilities at Risk — Awareness is one thing, but deciding where to apply limited resources to accelerate knowledge transfer is the next step.  Working with the executive team, we identified areas where prospective retirements posed the most compelling risks for organizational performance. The need to preserve relationships with key donors and the unique knowledge of key operational processes were identified as top priorities.

3. Pilot Solutions in High Risk Areas — The agency’s CFO knew some core processes were vulnerable to disruption if key people left the finance function. But he wanted a more detailed analysis. So we developed a Knowledge Silo Matrix in his department to pinpoint critical areas at risk. This diagnostic plotted the skills of each staff member across all of the department’s capabilities. It was the first step to implementing a knowledge retention strategy that will minimize the costs of any turnover in essential staff.

Leaders were also concerned about the looming retirement of a veteran regional director. His extensive relationships with local politicians, reporters and donors in his region was considered key to the ongoing success of his division. To help transfer knowledge about these connections we worked with the regional director to develop a “relationship map,” which would be shared with his successor to create a smoother transition.

4. Build Internal Knowledge Retention Capabilities — Developing the Knowledge Silo Matrix and the relationship map were the beginning of an ongoing process to build internal knowledge transfer capabilities within the agency staff. This would help sustain and even improve performance despite the wave of retirements that will hit this non-profit in the next few years.

Do you have an aging executive team? Are veteran employees with critical skills and knowledge likely to leave in the next few years? Do you have a process in place to transfer and retain their key capabilities? Or is it just easier to ignore this risk? What will be the impact on future performance if you don’t make an organized effort to transfer this experiential knowledge? Contact us if you want to discuss how we might help.