In the past, it was taken for granted that people hired would work for decades and then retire from their company. Yet that is no longer the case. Today, the person who works ten or more years for the same company is a rarity. This is especially true of talented managers and workers, for these individuals find nothing at all wrong with working one year here and one year there as they attempt to advance their careers. It is a great loss to see talented people go from a company, and even in down economies workers are unafraid to leave a job for what they think are greener pastures.

As C-level executives, CIOs run the IT organization. Two levels down the ranks, however, their middle managers make IT run. After all, these managers -- the directors of managers -- are the ones who carry out the CIO's agenda. Yet they're among the likeliest in the organization to leave. They're entrusted with interpreting the decisions CIOs make at the corporate level and putting them into action.

Last week Deloitte Consulting LLP published a conversation on its Website with Jeff Schwarz, a principal in Deloitte's Human Capital practice, who shared his thoughts on how an economic rebound will affect companies' approach to talent management. When the economy turns around, recession will also turn-from retention strategy to potent turnover catalyst. Talent management will involve a delicate balancing act for companies, he said.

When I last wrote about this topic, I went to admittedly laborious detail about the literal impossibility of "creating" a sense of urgency in a team. This post was based on a forum discussion of the same title. The continuing discussion includes a remark that my observation is, while accurate, "entirely unhelpful."

Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe: "Nothing happens until it gets sold."

The latest Technology Quarterly in the December 12 issue of The Economist profiles the career of Bob Metcalfe, inventor of the Ethernet, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist. Ambitious IT executives would do well to take a thoughtful read, because here is a larger-than-life example of someone who, though not an IT chief, embodies that magical combination of qualities that makes a CIO in demand. A brilliant technologist who invented the Ethernet at the tender age of 27, Metcalfe was enterprising (he founded 3Com Corp.) and adroit in communication. Indeed, he understood that communication was what turned great technology into money. For Metcalfe that money was his personal fortune, but the same concept applies to technology and business profitability.  "Nothing happens until it gets sold," he tells The Economist. Even a technology as compelling as the Ethernet didn't make Metcalfe a zillionaire until he got the likes of Digital Equipment, Intel, Xerox, Sun, and even Microsoft behind it. (Incidentally, before settling on "Ethernet," names batted around for the networking technology included "Bulletin Board," "Parliamentary Procedure," and "Lazy Susan.")

I've been writing a lot about findings from a study published this month by Development Dimensions International on the state of the "individual contributor," or non-management employee. The survey of 1,000 individual contributors found that 51 percent of them felt stagnant in their jobs (as opposed to contented). The report then goes into detail about the workers' job situations, how they feel about their situations, and what some of their specific frustrations were.