Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

I wrote this post in 2008, midway through the Great Recession (2007-2009), which lowered demand for talent and mitigated the expected people shortage. It took a decade, but the talent shortage is here with a  vengeance — at all levels. Moreover, birth rates have fallen below replacement needs creating a demographic time bomb. One result is that bosses at all level need to become expert at managing a multigenerational workforce — not just managing, but also hiring outside their comfort zone if they want to stay staffed. More on that tomorrow.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Great post by Steve Roesler over at All Things Workplace on How Age Impacts Your View of Life. It focuses on satisfaction and expectations at various stages of life. Click over, it’s well worth reading.

But what I wanted to discuss here today appeared near the end of the post.

“During the past few years we’ve seen the headlines for Talent Wars, Saving Institutional Knowledge and Learning, and Diversity. My experience so far with recent layoffs has been that workers nearing retirement are being offered packages to accelerate their decisions…I wonder if the decision-making maturity and collective knowledge of these newly “retired” workers will be irreplaceable and actually prompt a lengthening of the recovery process.”

Steve’s got a point about the recovery, but what if this mess hadn’t happened?

What if a normal down cycle had occurred? One that didn’t go global with the same vengeance; one that required only spotty realignment as opposed to wholesale layoffs.

Worker demographics have been a global concern for over a decade, but the MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and the corresponding skills needed to manage a multigenerational workforce haven’t improved nearly as much as was hoped.

Why? Is there a root to the problem (challenge, if you prefer) that should be addressed, but isn’t?

I have an idea about the root, tell me what you think.

I believe that one large piece of this problem stems from the relationship of parents and children and the difficulty of letting go and changing the paradigms.

Notice that ‘paradigm’ is plural, since there are several going on simultaneously; the major ones are

• older (parent), younger (child);
• peer (siblings/relatives) to peer;
• older (sibling/relative), younger (sibling/relative) and vice versa,

but there are multiple other minor configurations.

What I’ve found is that although there is no family involved, for many people the interaction styles are habitual, unconscious and happen across all ages with no discernible pattern.

If, in fact, this is a root problem how do we fix it? Other than a one-at-a-time approach I have no idea.

What are your thoughts regarding the validity of my hypothesis? What ideas do you have to address it?

Image credit: Wonder Woman

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

In a country still focused on youth it’s good to remember that Rob Hull was no spring chicken when he founded Adaptive Insights in 2003, was rejected 70 times by VCs and survived the 2008 recession. Adaptive is now a software unicorn that seems to have no interest in chasing spring chickens when hiring — just great talent of whatever age — and ranks 3.9 on glassdoor.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Who does a company, with explosive growth, founded and built by old folks in their forties and fifties all with extensive executive management experience, turn to when moving to the next level?

The company hasn’t disclosed exact revenue figures, but it says it grew new annual recurring revenue by more than 50% in 2014, and claims more than 2,500 companies, including Coca Cola, Toyota, and AAA use its software. It’s raised $100 million in funding from investors like Salesforce, Norwest Venture Partners, and Bessemer Venture Partners.

The company is Adaptive Insights and the guy is Tom Bogan, an even older guy, with even more experience.

A guy who is (gasp) 63 years old.

Gasp, because according to a recent study, old people shouldn’t even go out in public.

When a large sample of Facebook groups created by 20- to 29-year-olds was examined by a team based at the Yale School of Public Health, three-quarters of the groups were found to denigrate old people. More than a third advocated banning old people from public activities like shopping.

Of course, one assumes that the ‘old people’ to which they refer aren’t their relatives.

(I’d like to hear them on the subject 10, 20, 30 and 40 years from now.)

There is enormous value in having ‘been there/done that’ through multiple economic cycles, cultural change, globalization and technology evolution/revolution.

But to take advantage of it you need to be comfortable enough in your own skin to admit you need to learn — like Mark Zukerberg and Larry Page.

Image credit: Adaptive Insights

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over nearly a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written. Golden Oldies is a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

Seniors are already a giant market and growing every day, but the solutions are being done most often by twenty/thirty/forty-somethings who have no real idea what seniors face. Don’t believe me? Try this. Lightly smear your glasses (or sunglasses) with Vaseline and wear them for a few hours. You’ll end up with a much better understanding of the world in which your parents/grandparents see. Or you can do as Ideo did. Read other Golden Oldies here.

How would you respond to the following?

• Would you hire a woman?
• Would you hire an old woman?
• A really old woman?
• Could such a woman contribute significantly to a project?
• What could she teach your hot, young engineers?

While most founders would answer ‘no’ or ‘nothing’, IDEO thinks differently.

The company recently hired Barbara Beskind and both she and IDEO consider her 90 years a major advantage.

She applied after seeing an interview with IDEO founder David Kelley, who talked about the importance of a truly diverse design team and hires accordingly.

The aging Boomer market has companies salivating and hundreds are developing products for them.

The problem, of course, is that younger designers have no idea what difficulties older people face; not the obvious ones, but those that are more subtle.

Beskind does.

For example, IDEO is working with a Japanese company on glasses to replace bifocals. With a simple hand gesture, the glasses will turn from the farsighted prescription to the nearsighted one. Initially, the designers wanted to put small changeable batteries in the new glasses. Beskind pointed out to them that old fingers are not that nimble.

“It really caused the design team to reflect.” They realized they could design the glasses in a way that avoided the battery problem.

It’s the little things that make or break products and the knowledge of the little things comes mostly from having been there/done that.

That kind of insight is priceless.

Now how would you answer those questions?

Image credit: jm3 on Flickr

Great post by Steve Roesler over at All Things Workplace on How Age Impacts Your View of Life. It focuses on satisfaction and expectations at various stages of life. Click over, it’s well worth reading.

But what I wanted to discuss here today appeared near the end of the post.

“During the past few years we’ve seen the headlines for Talent Wars, Saving Institutional Knowledge and Learning, and Diversity. My experience so far with recent layoffs has been that workers nearing retirement are being offered packages to accelerate their decisions…I wonder if the decision-making maturity and collective knowledge of these newly “retired” workers will be irreplaceable and actually prompt a lengthening of the recovery process.”

Steve’s got a point about the recovery, but what if this mess hadn’t happened?

What if a normal down cycle had occurred? One that didn’t go global with the same vengeance; one that required only spotty realignment as opposed to wholesale layoffs.

Worker demographics have been a global concern for over a decade, but the MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and the corresponding skills needed to manage a multigenerational workforce haven’t improved nearly as much as was hoped.

Why? Is there a root to the problem (challenge, if you prefer) that should be addressed, but isn’t?

I have an idea about the root, tell me what you think.

I believe that one large piece of this problem stems from the relationship of parents and children and the difficulty of letting go and changing the paradigms.

Notice that ‘paradigm’ is plural, since there are several going on simultaneously; the major ones are

• older (parent), younger (child);
• peer (siblings/relatives) to peer;
• older (sibling/relative), younger (sibling/relative) and vice versa,

but there are multiple other minor configurations.

What I’ve found is that although there is no family involved, for many people the interaction styles are habitual, unconscious and happen across all ages with no discernible pattern.

If, in fact, this is a root problem how do we fix it? Other than a one-at-a-time approach I have no idea.

What are your thoughts regarding the validity of my hypothesis? What ideas do you have to address it?

Image credit: flickr