The Coming Knowledge and Capability Shortage

Abstract

OVERVIEW:As the 76 million baby boomers, who represent 28 percent of the U.S. working population, begin retiring, organizations face a knowledge and capability crisis. The experience, knowledge, skills, and networks—the “deep smarts”—of these technical professionals and managers will walk out the door with them. Executives and managers can proactively develop and use decision-support processes to model the areas in their organizations where the knowledge and capability shortages will be severe, and take actions now to mitigate the potential tremendous loss of knowledge.KEY CONCEPTS:: critical talentretirementdecision-support simulationknowledge loss