This is so stupid

Call to fill boomers' chairs may go unanswered

That thundering sound is the collective tread of Canada's Baby Boomers taking the final steps toward retirement. As the generation that defined excess, as much through their numbers as their spending habits, prepares to step down from senior management positions, a recent study shows that there might not be enough qualified people to pick up the slack. "There is going to be a significant leadership gap," said Prem Benimadhu, vp in organizational performance at the Conference Board of Canada. A recent report by the board, titled The Strategic Value of People: Human Resources Trends and Metrics, found there are not enough people to fill the places Boomers will leave empty. And worse, the ones that are available are not prepared for the job. To complicate matters, the next generation of high-level executives are not much younger than the ones retiring so companies could be faced with another shift in senior management in less than five years. When it comes to losing two sets of senior executives, in quick succession, the transportation industry stands to take the biggest hit with second-level executives having a median age of 48. The report also found nearly half of senior-level executives achieved top-level performance ratings, while only a quarter of their potential successors were performing at the same level.

One serious complication is people are not sticking with one job, Benimadhu said. People expect to switch jobs five times so company loyalty is basically a thing of the past. Shifting between companies can be beneficial to workers but destabilizes corporate structure, Benimadhu said. "Corporate memory is essential for success, which is why recruiting outside talent can lead to complications," he said. Outside talent is typically chosen to bring a fresh perspective, which can be a bit too fresh, he said. "They try to bring about changes, without having a significant knowledge of the cultural aspects of the company." But pulling in outside talent may be the only way for Canadian companies to get an edge, said Dr. Anil Verma, professor at University of Toronto's Joseph L. Rotman School of Management. "The fact is that, traditionally, Canadian companies are not leaders when it comes to creating talent," he said. But companies should remedy that problem rather than just trying to fix it with new workers. "If companies don't want to be destabilized or derailed from their strategic goals, then they should be investing a lot more in developing talent internally."

"What worked 15 years ago, 10 years ago, five years ago isn't going to work now," said Bruce Peer, president and managing director of the Canadian Management Centre. One antiquated item that should be on the chopping block is mandatory retirement. The idea of retiring in your fifties and sixties was developed in the 1930s before modern health care, Peer said. "You were dealing with a life expectancy and therefore a life effectiveness, if there is such an expression, which is far less than it is now." Rather than cutting senior workers loose, corporations should establish programs, such as mentoring, that integrate that experience with existing younger talent, he said. The second issue is that an increasingly diverse workforce means the entire structure of Canadian corporate culture "is changing dramatically and nobody is ready for that" he said. "It's something in Canada that we are going to have to step up to very very quickly." Very few Canadian organizations have invested in training programs to prepare for the coming changes, Peer said.
(National Post 060726)

I think this just shows how short-sighted and short-term corporations are in their thinking. Demographics is not a speculative science - the numbers have always been there. I find it amazing that only just in the past few years has anyone been showing any concern for this problem. Corporations should have been implementing contigency plans for this, whether it be fast-tracking, mentoring, or whatever, a decade or so ago. But instead everyone at the top has been too concerned on protecting their position of power, their pension plans and their stock options. The corporate world (especially in transportation) have sort of shot themselves in the foot and I can't say that I feel sorry for them. They've spent too much time focusing on technology and efficiencies while forgetting that they still need to retain good people to make good decisions.