In case you hadn’t noticed the fertility rate is dropping, the world’s population is aging and it’s happening in a way that will forever change the workplace.

Back in 2010, Standard & Poor’s predicted that the biggest influence on “the future of national economic health, public finances, and policymaking” will be “the irreversible rate at which the world’s population is aging.”

As usual, our governments at all levels are doing little more than funding studies, wringing their hands and making dire predictions. In all likelihood they will continue doing more of the same, since constructive efforts would require bipartisan cooperation, and politicians aren’t known for their willingness to bite unpopular bullets — as our country’s aging/decrepit infrastructure proves.

Companies, by contrast, are uniquely positioned to change practices and attitudes now. Transformation won’t be easy, but companies that move past today’s preconceptions about older employees and respond and adapt to changing demographics will realize significant dividends, generating new possibilities for financial return and enhancing the lives of their employees and customers.

Companies might be in a better positioned, but rampant cognitive bias, whether unconscious or conscious, often prevails, resulting in a preference for hiring “people like me.”

Soon, the workforce will include people from as many as five generations ranging in age from teenagers to 80-somethings.

Are companies prepared? The short answer is “no.” Aging will affect every aspect of business operations — whether it’s talent recruitment, the structure of compensation and benefits, the development of products and services, how innovation is unlocked, how offices and factories are designed, and even how work is structured — but for some reason, the message just hasn’t gotten through.

So forget companies.

Current bosses, as well as bosses-to-be, have the great advantage of being able to do it now themselves, rather than waiting for their companies to act.

And it’s to their advantage, assuming they want to keeping their teams humming, well-staffed and highly productive.

But, depending on your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™), don’t expect it to happen overnight or minimize the amount of work that may be required.

To get started, click the link at the link. It will take you to a seven part series in the Harvard Business Review called The Aging Workforce. It’s probably the fastest way to wrap your mind around what’s happening in all its complexity — or at least a lot of it.

And join me tomorrow for a closer look at cognitive bias, which affects the entire human race — including you and me.

Image credit: Justin Henry

Stereotyping is stupid.

It’s stupid because you can’t generalize out the traits of a few to an entire group.

And the larger the group, the stupider the results of stereotyping.

However, the lure of lumping together a large, demographic group for selling purposes is catnip to marketers and also the media.

The problem was well illustrated over the last few years in the depiction of Generation Y — those worthless, entitled Millennials.

80 million of them.

That thinking will go a long way to screwing up your efforts to sell to, hire and manage them.

So think about it.

Don’t you find it a bit ridiculous that 80 million people all think and act identically?

People who come from totally different backgrounds.

Not to mention totally different states; what are the chances of people from California/Maine/Texas/Florida raising their kids so identically that they would think alike?

All 80 million, if you listen to the media.

Jessica Kriegel provides great insight and an in-depth look at the stupidity in her new book, Unfairly Labeled: How Your Workplace Can Benefit from Ditching Generational Stereotypes.

The more you look at generational stereotypes the stupider they become.

The more you buy into them the more money it costs you and your company.

Flickr image credit: Umberto Salvagnin

Today we’re going to start with the general and move to the specific.

Last year we saw a generational shift during the Presidential election and that generational shift is happening in business, too.

Ethisphere recently spoke with William W. George, a professor of management at Harvard Business School who is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Medtronic and currently a director of both ExxonMobil and Goldman Sachs. He talked about how leadership in business is going through a huge and dramatic transformation as the baby boom gives way to younger executives with very different ways of seeing the world, connecting and working. He also talked about what it takes to be a strong leader in a challenging time.

George considers Chip Conley too old at 49 to be one of those transformational leaders, which just goes to show how silly it is to define things by a random circumstance like birth date. It may seem to work as a generality for marketers, but it rarely holds up on a case-by-case basis. In a delightful post, Conley talks about his leadership lessons during junior high.

No, what Danari [13 year old grandson] wanted to know is which classes had the most profound impact on me as a leader today?

I do like Bob Sutton’s stuff, he’s a great writer and he always makes sense. In this post he looks the boss as a shield, not for herself, but for her people.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic lately, since it’s the focus of an article I’m publishing in September’s issue of Harvard Business Review called “The Boss as Human Shield,” and of one chapter in Good Boss, Bad Boss. There are many nuances to how bosses protect their followers, but it’s a useful simplification to say that the protection must be both tangible and emotional.

The recent stories of unbridled greed makes you think that nothing would surprise you, but any time you think that another story comes along and you realize that you ain’t seen nothing yet. The story of David H. Brooks, CEO of DHB, which makes body armor for the military and police, fits that category. It’s not just his greed, although that is stunning,

“What makes it interesting isn’t that there is anything novel legally about it, but just how egregious this guy’s alleged behavior is, how gross the abuses are and how much greed is involved,” said Meredith R. Miller, an associate law professor at Touro College in Central Islip, N.Y.

but it was his defense that blew me away.

His lawyers also defended the hiring of prostitutes for employees and board members, arguing in court papers that it represented a legitimate business expense “if Mr. Brooks thought such services could motivate his employees and make them more productive.”

Unbelievable.

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedroelcarvalho/2812091311/

Image credit: robchivers

Want to know what people are really thinking about the hottest topics in the workplace? Then check out Business Week’s massive discussion of the top six topics.

The six topics are the result of voting by 8500 people; they are

• Work-Life Balance
• Staying Entrepreneurial
• Time Management
• Negotiating Bureaucracy
• Toxic Bosses
• Generational Tension

“…now we’re looking for solutions. Starting today, you can submit comments, essays, pictures, or videos chronicling the challenges you face in any of the categories—and how you’ve tried to resolve them. At the end of June, BusinessWeek writers and editors will use the material, along with the input of experts, to produce a precedent-setting multimedia package—with content and videos online beginning Aug. 14, the Special Issue in mailboxes Aug. 15, and broadcast segments appearing on BusinessWeek TV Aug. 16 and 17.”

My apologies for bringing this information to you so late, but you still have today. And I will bring you more on the discussion as it develops.

Image credit: maxbrown

I used to be a whiz at names and phone numbers, but not any more. I excuse these lapses with jokes about accessing data with only 1 K of RAM or that my brain is so stuffed that it’s hard to keep track of minor details.

Well, lo and behold, it’s true.

A recent article in the NY Times explains that in older (that’s me:) brains.

“A broad attention span may enable older adults to ultimately know more about a situation and the indirect message of what’s going on than their younger peers. …much of what occurs is a gradually widening focus of attention that makes it more difficult to latch onto just one fact, like a name or a telephone number.”

What the researchers did was to have both young and older people read text that had extra words thrown in as a distraction; then they asked questions related to the added words. While the younger folks read faster than the older readers, they didn’t process the distracting words.

“For the young people, it’s as if the distraction never happened,” said an author of the review, Lynn Hasher, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and a senior scientist at the Rotman Research Institute. “But for older adults, because they’ve retained all this extra data, they’re now suddenly the better problem solvers. They can transfer the information they’ve soaked up from one situation to another.”

But the best part, both for quieting fears about memory loss and bolstering ego, was the comment about what this means.

Jacqui Smith, a professor of psychology and research professor at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, who was not involved in the current research, said there was a word for what results when the mind is able to assimilate data and put it in its proper place — wisdom.

“These findings are all very consistent with the context we’re building for what wisdom is,” she said. “If older people are taking in more information from a situation, and they’re then able to combine it with their comparatively greater store of general knowledge, they’re going to have a nice advantage.”

What about you? Where are you on the road to wisdom?

Image credit: Sam UL

Yesterday, I wondered if the adoption of social media tools would parallel the spread, or lack thereof, of telecommuting and asked, “Is the problem truly generational? Age-related? A function of company size? Corporate culture?”

I believe that fear is the underlying, driving force behind not being willing to share, which, in turn, is the number one barrier to widespread use of social media tools.

People who fear often seek an antidote that doesn’t require them to change.

They see the antidote as power.

The source of power is control.

The only things worth controlling are money and information.

Money speaks for itself, whereas people at all levels, not just managers, alleviate their fear by finding ways to control the flow of information and they do this with little personal effort and at no perceived cost to themselves.

But fear is like a cancer in MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and will continue to grow unless addressed directly.

It may seem more difficult to make changes to your MAP, but the end result of changing it is far more valuable and lasting then the short-term fix offered by power—which is ethereal at best and imaginary at worst.

I can help if you or someone you know is dealing with fear and wants a lasting solution, feel free to call me at 866.265.7267

Image credit: macinate

I was talking the old fashioned way (by phone) this morning with Scott Allen on the challenges, difficulties and plain old problems (another old fashioned term) of implementing social media tools in many companies. I said that it reminded me of the late 1970 – early 80s when the telecommunitg egg was trying its best to hatch—and still is in many places.

That was when the current crop of managers were still workers, most companies were hierarchal-but-in-the-process-of-flattening and management jobs were being eliminated left and right.

Those workers (today’s manager and execs) rallied and railed for the opportunity to work from home and the managers quaked in their collective boots because if workers were self-managing and productive from home then why did they need managers.

Nearly thirty years later, with telecommuting still only a dream to many, how fast can we expect social media tools to be adopted?

Is the problem truly generational? Age-related? A function of company size? Corporate culture?

We’re told that in the long run we all become our parents.

Do we also become our bosses?

Tomorrow I’ll offer my take on it, but first—what do you think?