It’s that time of year again – time to create your Individual Development Plan or IDP. Staring down at the “official” corporate IDP form, one is reminded how limiting management theory has become (see Gary Hamel’s new book and website for more). So here’s a thought, for yourself and your key talent, do some management 3.0 pre-work before you fill in the blanks.

IDP 3.0 Structure

Before you get too SMART, get out your MAPS – Mastery, Autonomy, Purpose, and Strengths. Blending Dan Pink’s Motivation 3.0 with Gallup’s StrengthFinder gives you something to write corporate about.

Mastery – “Solving complex problems requires an inquiring mind and the willingness to experiment one’s way to a fresh solution. …Only engagement can produce Mastery [which is] essential in today’s economy.” Dan Pink

Autonomy – “…no one can plan effectively for someone else. It is better to plan for oneself, no matter how badly, than to be planned for by others, no matter how well.” Russell Ackhoff

Purpose – “Ultimately, each person has a significant degree of control over how many challenges she deals with. Even the simplest task, if carried out with care and attention [Purpose], can reveal layers and layers of opportunity to hone one’s skills.” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Strength – “Building on your strengths isn’t necessarily about ego. It is about responsibility. …It is your opportunity to take your natural talents and transform them through focus and practice and learning into near perfect performance.” Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton

IDP – The Prequel

Start with Purpose. For the foreseeable future, and these days 12-months is a long time horizon, what is your calling? How do you fit into the organization’s “grand design”? In the position you currently occupy, what is the source of your power and how will you use that to accomplish something significant? Becoming aware of your Purpose, you can design an IDP that generates conscious competence.

Layer in Strengths. This ensures your performance plan is both excellent and personally fulfilling. To do this you have to, first, know your strengths. But don’t just read the results…really digest them, embed them into your leadership IDP. How can you naturally combine these five elements to create a synergism that supersedes what they accomplish singularly (conscious competence)? Is there a shift in emphasis that, combined with the context of your current role, can catapult you to a new level of performance? Can this year provide you the challenges to polish one (or more) themes to produce real growth – growth of Phoenix proportions? Looking at your profile what complimentary strengths are essential to your work and WHO in your network has them? How do you enroll these folks to your cause this year?

Mastery generates the Plan. Into this fertile ground ask:

• What available challenges excite me? Be curious.
• What work leaves me deeply satisfied? Be engaged.
• What performance goals led to learning? Be mindful.
• What fuels me and gives me energy? Be joyful.

Autonomy delivers the Plan. Every day for as long as the plan is relevant, autonomy adapts the plan to change over the course of the year. What choices do you make, daily or hourly, to keep your plan in play? How will you achieve both autonomy and interdependence – the reality of working in a network organization? What boundaries exist and must be worked within? Are they negotiable? Shifting focus from “what” you must do to “how” you can do it places you squarely in Intrinsic Motivation, a learning mindset, and a positive attitude.

So there you have it, the MAPS of you – today, in this job – that will produce a SMART IDP and a successful, fulfilling year of work.

Turnover is costly – just how costly? Research studies have shown that the cost of replacing a professional or managerial employee runs 1.5 to 3.0 times his or her annual salary. And it can cost up to five times annual salary if you are looking at the intellectual capital – what a key person knows – when he or she walks out the door.

For example, to replace a $50,000 top notch sales person with a large customer base can cost you $171,500. And a $150,000 technical manager can ultimately cost $380,000 to replace. That’s no small pocket change. Here are 4 steps to retain your best people.

1. Calculate the True Costs
This includes the direct administration cost of recruitment (ads, background checks, assessments, paperwork plus the manager’s and HR’s time for interviewing, training, orientation) PLUS the indirect costs of performance differential (lost productivity, impact on customers, disruption to the team, lower morale and the lost ‘institutional wisdom’)..

2. Study the Demographics
Understanding and conquering turnover requires probing into the details. For example:

• Who is leaving (high performers or low performers, older versus younger people, recent hires or people with long tenure)?
• What job categories or departments are experiencing the most turnover (production staff, systems analysts, salespeople, nursing staff)?
• When are they leaving (after two weeks, six months, five years, or ten years)?
• Where are they going (your competitor, another industry, back to school, out of town?)

3. Target Strategic Positions and People
Not all turnover is equal. Simply looking at an annual turnover rate of 17% doesn’t tell the complete story. The loss of a top engineer with ten years of experience, strong customer contacts, and good relationships with suppliers is obviously more troubling than losing a filing clerk you hired a month ago

4. Identify the Real Causes
First, you need to understand the current state of mind of your workforce. Start by identifying why people are staying and what you are doing that creates that desire to remain. Then find out what troubles people and would lessen their commitment to your organization. Focus groups and employee surveys are effective ways to obtain real time employee feedback; to identify the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ drivers of employee satisfaction; and to develop realistic solutions.

Then, examine the data for the key reasons people stay and leave. Do further research on selected individuals or employee segments. The person who left because their spouse got a fantastic job in a different city may not be worth further exploration. But the outstanding performer who left for ‘better opportunities’ or ‘personal reasons’ may be worth a follow-up call, even a year or so after.

How It Works:
In one company, a detailed analysis revealed that 30% of its IT and 40% of its MBA new hires were leaving in less than 36 months. It then estimated both the direct and indirect costs for these segments. And it came out to a whopping $1.5 million dollars.

Focus groups were conducted with current and departed IT / MBA employees. Compensation and benefits were not the key turnover drivers, but rather, the day-to-day work was not challenging. These young ‘bucks’ were bored and fearful of losing their edge. In addition, supervisors lacked basic management skills and were unable to state clearly performance expectations or provide meaningful feedback. Only then could solutions be developed to deal with the real causes of the turnover.

Management Success Tip:

Employee retention is an extraordinarily complex issue. There is no one magic bullet. What I have consistently found is: That it’s NOT the money. When someone leaves for ‘better opportunities’, what has happened is that certain dissatisfactions – like the ones above – caused the person to put out feelers, or to become curious about recruiter calls, or to start surfing the job boards.

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• Copyright © 2012 Marcia Zidle business and leadership coach