Bold Approaches for Successfully Retaining Every Innovator, Part 1 of 2

企业高管都开始学习高价值的创新，它可以是5倍至300倍的平均雇员。但是知识是不足够的，因为你必须不断努力留住这些人正在不断针对其他公司的招聘。这应该是显而易见的，如果你的公司成功招募他们远离他们现有的雇主，有很高的概率，另一名雇主可以做同样的事情再次聘请他们离你而去。

Corporate executives are beginning to learn the high value of innovators, which can be 5 to 300 times the value of an average employee. If a company doesn t have enough innovators, a primary option is recruiting them. In a previous related article, I highlighted how you can successfully hire innovators. But that knowledge alone isn t sufficient because you have to constantly work to retain these individuals who are constantly being targeted by recruiters from other firms. It should be obvious that if your firm successfully recruited them away from their existing employer, there is a high probability that another employer could do the same thing again and recruit them away from you. Unfortunately, 95% of all retention approaches can best be described as marginally effective for the average employee, which makes them useless when you re trying to retain an individual innovator who doesn t have the same needs and expectations of the average employee. Therefore, if you want to keep the best innovators, provide your managers with a toolkit of bold, aggressive, and data-driven retention approaches that are tailored specifically to your innovators. Many of the practices that work to retain innovators are also effective in increasing their productivity. In this two-part article I will highlight the most effective retention practices that are specifically targeted toward retaining innovators, game-changers, and top performers. After over

20 years of retention research and practice, I can also assure you that each one of these 30+ tools is effective. 6 Characteristics of Effective Retention Efforts for Innovators You can t use run-of-the-mill retention approaches on innovators and expect to have any chance of success. So when you re designing your effort and selecting or developing innovation tools for innovators, make sure they meet the following characteristics. A data-driven approach 95% of retention efforts that I have reviewed are based on emotion and guesswork. Because of the value of innovators, you simply can t afford failures, so a superior approach is to use data and marketing research techniques to identify what works and why specifically for innovators. Prioritize innovators because of the tremendous business impact of innovators, you need to retain each one of them. Prioritize your innovators or develop a separate retention program for the remainder of your employees. Realize that innovators have different motivators all the surveys you conduct that cover all employees will give you results that simply don t apply to innovators. Doing the best work of your life, the freedom to innovate, and having a real impact on the world will not be among the motivators of Homer Simpson. A personalized approach blanket company-wide retention approaches seldom have much impact because the factors that cause employees to leave are unique to each individual. As a result, if you expect to retain innovators you need to develop a personalized one-size-fits-one retention plan. Identify the innovators who have the highest risk of leaving even though you have prioritized innovators, you should also identify and then focus your retention efforts on those who have the highest probability of leaving. Use a toolkit approach an innovator s own manager knows the target employee best, and in addition, they suffer the most pain if the innovator leaves. As a result, the innovator s manager should own the retention process. In direct contrast, programs owned by HR should be avoided, and instead, HR should develop retention toolkits which allow a manager to pick and choose the retention tools or levers that they find will have the greatest impact in their particular team. Use the above characteristics to guide and assess your overall effort. Of course the key component of any successful retention effort is providing your managers the tools or levers that have proven to be effective in actually influencing innovators. The following section contains a variety of retention tools that have proven to be effective on innovators. A Retention Toolkit for Innovators These are aggressive and bold but proven retention tools. They are not designed for the average employee mostly because they are time-consuming. I have broken these retention tools into two distinct categories. Part I covers tools that individual managers can implement alone, and Part II covers the retention tools that require some outside help from HR and senior managers. Part I

17 bold and aggressive actions that individual managers can take to increase retention The actions or tools in this section can generally be selected and implemented by the innovator s direct manager. Develop an individual retention plan because every innovator s situation is unique, the innovator s manager, working with HR s retention experts, should put together a personalized retention plan for each individual innovator. The plan should first identify the potential issues that are likely to cause the innovator to consider leaving. Then the manager should put together a plan to implement the appropriate tools or retention levers that are likely to have highest impact on countering those issues. HR should distribute templates and sample plans to make it easier on managers. Ensure that they are doing the best work of their life Generally, the No. 1 motivator of innovators is to be doing the best work of their life. The best way is to ensure that a manager sits down with the retention target once a year and works out exactly what those work tasks, interest areas, and projects would be. A follow-up quarterly meeting is required to ensure that they are continually doing what they consider to be their best work. Develop a how-to-best-manage-me profile even a great manager needs to understand the most effective or optimal ways of communicating, motivating, empowering, engaging, rewarding, making decisions, and providing feedback to the innovator. The best way to do that is to work with the innovator to establish a profile the covers the most effective ways that this individual can be managed. This is best done when they start, but it should be updated at least every two years. An alternative approach is to ask them to assume that they were their own new manager and ask them, How would you change your current job and how you are managed to make the job perfect? Incidentally, often the best way to manage innovators is to treat them like volunteers and use influence rather than orders to direct them. Obviously their retention and how satisfied the innovator is with the way that they are managed should be key metrics and reward factors for their manager and their manager s manager. Develop a more of/less of excitement list in addition to having the right manager, being managed optimally, and doing the best work of their life, there are additional work factors that can either excite or frustrate the innovator. At least once a year, use an interview or survey to identify the positive excitement factors that they want more of. Some of the typical more of factors that innovators often want include better equipment, support help, opportunities to work with other innovators, and improved executive access. In addition to these excitement factors, you should also identify and try to minimize the less-of work-related elements that bore, frustrate, cause stress, or that they consider to be a waste of their time. Typical less-of factors include meetings, paperwork, back to back travel, an irritati