I'm a former Army Military Intelligence officer and current Master of International Business student at Tufts University. My Thesis is on Organizational Downsizing and how the US Army can complete there current downsizing without losing their best junior leaders.
I'm looking for how the business world accomplishes this and how to translate their best business practices to the Army. Are there any HR personnel who have the time to open a dialog with me concerning this topic?
Answers
First of all, thank you for your service!
I am a IT geek, not an HR expert. But I can tell you that the downsized organization is a challenge that spans across industry lines. Ever heard of "crowdsourcing"? It's the next evolution of outsourcing that I see trending in the business world.
Basically, it's a way to commoditize skills in a free market approach and allows the organization to focus on innovation and core competencies. Crowdsourcing allows "tribal knowledge" of an organization to be retained by a smaller number of people, while the skills and knowledge that lend themselves to commoditization can be unhooked and sent out to a finite "crowd" of people/resources that have just enough skills needed to complete the tasks. This "crowd" can be any group of people/resources that YOU define. Crowd participants "compete" for a task you outline by publishing submissions. Multiple participants compete for the same task, but you pick the "winner" and some sort of "award" (it could be money, credit for time worked, or anything else you define) is dispersed.
Crowdsourcing allows an organization to downsize it's retained staff (or free up people to focus on core competencies elsewhere in the organization). Not sure how helpful this might be, but something you might want to look into.
Feel free to reach out if you want to discuss further.
Hi Morgan,
I have experience in this area having worked many years in the finanical services industry and was involved in multiple mergers and acquisitions. I would be happy to arrange a phone call to share my perspective with you. Let me know if that would be of interest. Thanks, Celeste
Regarding your thesis, it sounds very interesting and I have been there, done that. I am willing to get on the phone and talk with you about this next week if you give me some dates and times that would work for you in which I could call you, and I can confirm when I will call.
Thank you for your service to keep our nation safe.
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