I seem to be stuck on a theme. Last week’s column was about the lowered expectations of retirement that many, if not most baby boomers will be accepting. This week I’d like to talk about the duty we boomers have to help following generations through mentorship, education and guidance.
There is a company I work with who has an even more serious set of demographic realities than the population at large. While about half of our country’s working population is comprised of people born in the boomer period of 1946 to 1964, this organization has 80 percent of its U.S. workforce over the age of 40. About 60 percent of their employees in this country are over the age of 50. They, like the entire nation, are faced with a coming vacuum of talent and experience.
One of the truths of organizational development we all tend to overlook is that it takes years to create capable leaders. We tend to think of organizational development as a matter of designing an appropriate structure, inhabited by hard-working and talented people who are then provided training and educational opportunities by their enlightened leaders. While these ingredients are certainly necessary, they are far from sufficient to create effective organizational development. With these elements, leadership development is ready to begin, not conclude.
In the martial arts, it is said that when you have received your black belt, you’re ready to start your training. This beginning point is achieved by mastering the basic elements of a particular system of self-defense, applying them effectively in spontaneous circumstances and being able to teach others the principles involved. Then it is time, and it takes time, to get experience that provides the texture, the visceral understanding and the integration of all the training into an artistic expression that becomes fully intuitive. Without the experiential challenges and opportunities, the mistakes and successes, quality of judgment is not achieved.
As our population demographics continue to force us to face this coming vacuum of talent and experience, there are things we can do to take advantage of the fact that half of our workforce will soon be grandmas and grandpas. First of all, there will be essentially one experienced and wise professional “grandparent” for every remaining worker. If half of the workforce is retired fully or partially, they should have some time to devote to helping the employed population learn faster, through guidance, coaching and teaching.
Secondly, the rapid rate of boomers leaving the workforce over the next decade will create many opportunities for younger employees to be forced to accept challenges that will be way over their heads. They will have to learn fast and accept responsibilities before they are fully ready to do so. They will have to step it up a few notches and get comfortable being uncomfortably inadequate as they fill bigger shoes soon to be kicked off in favor of a barefoot romp through the park with the grandkids. The younger employees who still have half or more of their working life ahead of them are going to get a faster, more voluminous string of experiential opportunities. Therefore, they will be forced to take on more, sooner in their career than they would have if our workforce demographics were a pleasing, perfect bell curve.
Thirdly, the next 10 years are likely to be a slow-growth economic period of continued focus on sustainability, unaided by the plentiful, cheap capital that was available from 1993 to 2008. Disciplined business principles are in vogue again. Building economic prosperity is returning to its foundational roots of providing value, at a profit, with little or no debt. Wild speculation will continue, of course, but no longer will it be trotted around in the disguise of a triple-A investment rating. This return to first principles of capitalism will provide an environment for developing leaders and professionals that will instill competencies which were largely disdained during the 15 misguided spendthrift years of easy money.
The company I mention above, whose workforce is so massively weighted to the senior section, is in the process of forming an Emeritus Faculty program. As their long-serving leaders and professionals retire, some will be invited to join a faculty of former company employees who have a desire to impart their knowledge and wisdom to people who have picked up the baton. This way, the company doesn’t completely lose the expertise created over several decades of work, and the coaching for leaders is provided by capable people who have personally been responsible for the duties now delegated to others. Outside coaches can help people develop certain skills and behaviors, but the application of these principles within the context of a particular industry or company is best taught by people who have actually done it themselves.
If our elders accept the responsibility to help others carry the economic torch into the future, the next generation or two could actually out-perform even the World War II generation in creating economic prosperity for Americans, and for others around the world. So you boomers, go ahead and play with your grandkids, kick back on the porch with a cold one and travel to those great national parks you’ve wanted to visit for so long. But reserve some time to work as a mentor to the folks who are tasked with solving the mess we boomers are leaving behind.
Friday, April 1, 2011