Are you spending time trying to figure out the Millennials on your team?  Many of the Baby Boomers in leadership are convinced Millennials just won’t stay loyal to one employer for long.  I’ve believed for a long time that generalizing about generations is just too easy and relieves us of any responsibility to work on methods to improve retention.

Chason Hecht, CEO of leading employee retention consulting firm Retensa (www.retensa.com) as quoted in the May 2017 Journal of Accountancy (yes I still read it!) sees things differently also – “There’s very little evidence that Millennials lack loyalty.  What they lack is a tolerance for boredom, discontentment and disengagement, for feeling disconnected from their peers, community, and society.” He makes a compelling case that it’s not just Millennials who feel this way but in fact all generations of employees are more likely to leave work they find unsatisfying. Add to this an improving economy, employees of every age being better connected and more likely to become aware of a new opportunity (read LinkedIn), and that same increased connectivity allowing someone to get a more accurate picture of a potential new employer and the result is more professionals of every generation willing to take the risk of leaving.

Remember – We’re ALL Millennials!

“Workforce Crisis” witten by Dychtwald, Erickson and Morrison and published in 1992 suggested

That the massive boomer generation was beginning to retire and coupled with declining birth rates leading to less younger workers, would lead to a brain drain. 

Was “Workforce Crisis” correct?  What is your experience today?  Is finding talent more difficult and perhaps more expensive than ever?  Are valuable projects and other initiatives being delayed for lack of qualified staff?  What strategies are you encouraging today in 2017 to be ready for the next wave of economic growth that may already be happening?

The Authors provided some advice in 1992 that maybe still valuable today.  Read on…

(1)    What skills will you be needing?

(2)    When will retirements hit?

(3)    Why do your employees stay or leave?

(4)    What are your sources for talent?

(5)    What academic feeder programs are you developing?

I was recently asked to speak at a career day at Notre Dame Academy in Park Hills, Kentucky. One of the issues we discussed was the number of job changes you can have before being considered a job hopper. I believe this article contains valuable information regarding timing of job changes for people at any stage of their career.

The final directive to the assembled pre-teens at the first Monday caddy school was to “keep up!”  What our caddymaster Pat Higgins really meant was “stay ahead!” What golfer who has the privilege of taking a caddy wants to look for his own ball?  When I first started caddying I would lag behind my golfer when I wasn’t entirely sure where the ball had traveled thinking I would be forgiven for being a couple of steps slow but not for failing to follow the flight of the ball.  What I learned was they knew I didn’t see the ball and thought I was a couple of steps slow.  The lesson I learned was to get ahead of the game, be the first to arrive at the most likely landing area and furiously survey the area to increase the likelihood of being the one to discover the right answer.

I didn’t realize I was neglecting this lesson early in my CPA firm career until an audit manager said “make a decision and move on, we didn’t hire you because you know what to do every time, we hired you because we believed you were smart and will make good decisions about what to do!”  I struggle at times to do the work that allows me to keep up – listening to and learning from others (in formal training sessions and informal settings) and making time to read.  At a recent Ohio Society of CPA’s continuing education session the instructor (a former national firm partner) said something I made a point of writing down and capturing in the Evernote app on my phone – “Your only consistent value add is in decision making and that comes from the training and practice that informs your sound analytical thinking combined with your objectivity and judgement.”

By now we have all heard the buzz. Siri has plenty of company. Alexa and Google have invaded the home. Tesla’s artificial intelligence is, well, driving itself. Google’s Deep Mind is running the company’s multi-billion-dollar search business. Even they don’t know how it works — it just does. IBM’s Watson has its own office and is predicting cancer treatments for real patients. You can’t even date online without artificial intelligence (A.I.) hooking you up.

There are even A.I.-based autonomous ships, bots, games and investment and commerce platforms that are emerging. Eventually A.I. will be everywhere. Are you ready for the A.I. revolution? Of course, the answer is no one is ready, because this is only A.I. 1.0 — the beginning of time. So let’s review.

Artificial intelligence has finally emerged, and the prospects for it transforming the enterprise are excellent. Every enterprise should be looking at what blend of A.I. they want to investigate. From machine learning to neural nets, recommendation engines and decision bots — the landscape of the marketplace is full of choices. The real question I would pose is, “What should CIOs be telling their CEOs about the A.I. revolution?” The answer: “Show me the business strategy.”

I would challenge CIOs to work out the strategy question first. What is the business strategy that would benefit and even justify adding artificial intelligence? How could we generate a competitive advantage from investing in machine learning or automated decision support that A.I. could offer? There needs to be a business value or competitive advantage that investing in A.I. makes clear. If not, then you are not ready. Or don’t invest much until you can answer this strategic question.

Too many companies are so impressed with A.I. buzz that they are moving headlong into A.I. without clarifying what the business strategy case could be. Are we going to be able to generate better customer service? Help employees make better decisions? Enable our customer to use more of our products or services? How about fix that problem that those pesky humans don’t seem to be able to handle? How will we be able to monetize artificial intelligence?