Interview with Ken Dychtwald on Midlife Crisis
February 2009 - By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary

Ken Dychtwald
Ken Dychtwald, founding president and CEO of Age Wave

important skill and experience. Or a lose-lose, if too many employees remain frustrated in their careers, gradually disengage, and merely count the days until retirement.

• Who are the disaffected people who stay back and why is it that they are bad for business?
  As discussed above, loss of productivity among burned-out, disaffected midcareer workers can be an even greater problem than turnover. Companies which do not appropriately motivate and meet the needs of midcareer workers will often pay the price with reduced energy, enthusiasm, innovation, and focus. Moreover, though turnover and retention problems are relatively easy to measure, declining productivity and innovation can be harder to identify but lead to long-term severe problems – particularly since many midcareer workers are in positions of significant responsibility and leadership.

• What proactive steps do you suggest for the companies to address the imminent middlescents? Are there any best practices/ best companies in this regard?
  I recommend three tactics for organizations to help refresh, reengage and unlock more of the potential of midcareer workers:

1. Rekindle careers.
   There are a variety of ways to rejuvenate people and their careers, engendering a fresh sense of accomplishment and renewed loyalty and commitment to the organization. These include fresh assignments or career switches, mentoring or knowledgesharing roles, additional training and development, and sabbaticals. Change of pace, the opportunity to learn, and the opportunity to apply what’s already known in new ways can all reengagemidcareer employees, rekindle their ambition, and rejuvenate their careers. Part of this initiative involves the creation of a culture of continued learning. Dow Chemical, for example, has developed an explicit companywide expectation that employees at all levels will continue to learn and grow, seek out new roles and development opportunities, and ready themselves for their “next career” moves. Companies can also create processes that empower midcareer workers to explore engaging new opportunities. At Duke Power, employees can post their jobs in search of swaps with others of equal grade level. At Lands’End, employees can request two week trial transfers to other departments and then finalize to switch if all goes well.

2. Recruit reentrants.
   Organizations can capitalize on the opportunity to recruit skilled and experienced midcareer employees, including people returning to the workforce (for example, women returning after raising families), people changing careers, and people displaced by other organizations’ restructurings. These people are often highly capable and eager, but they may not have the recent relevant track record that dominates most hiring decisions. Organizations hire young workers primarily on the basis of capability and potential more than immediate experience. They should be open to hiring people of all ages on that basis. Many organizations may find a substantial untapped workforce pool by targetingmidcareer workers. For example, ARO, Inc., a business process outsourcer based in Kansas City, Missouri, struggled to recruiting talented staff for its calling centers. Consequently, ARO upgraded the technology needed to accommodate virtual workers, then set about recruiting. The target: baby boomers, who represent a large potential pool of workers and bring desired characteristics. “Boomers are mature, experienced, and comfortable making decisions on the phone,” says Amigoni. “ARO has clients in the insurance, financial services, and medical sectors, and a lot of the people we talk to are older. It helps that the people making the calls on financial services products are older, because they are in similar circumstances to the customers.”

3. Expand leadership development.
   Despite the size of the boomer cohort and the number ofmidcareer employees eager to fill the relatively scarce promotion slots available, many large organizations find their leadership ‘bench strength’ surprisingly thin because their leadership development pipelines have gotten leaky. Companies can take the opportunity to refill the pipeline withmidcareer aswell as young high potentials, and to recognize late-bloomer candidates for leadership. They can also extend leadership development experiences to people who will be leaders within their organizations or functions, but are not necessarily on a path to the executive suite. For example, RBC Financial Group felt it needed to develop the next group of leaders to run the fast-growing group of banks and financial services companies. They recognized a capability gap between the current executive team and the leaders to follow. So they created teams of current leaders and “nextgeneration leaders.” Through direct experience sharing and involvement in decision making, the next-generation leaders learned both specific techniques and the core leadership values of RBC while simultaneously participating in the development of new strategy. Highly respected current leaders communicated these leadership values by telling real RBC ‘stories’ that describe chaotic business situations, decision making, uncertainty, social interaction, and the like. The future leaders learned to implement strategy by sharing experience of real struggles of making decisions while maintaining values, trust, and fairness. Future leaders created development action plans and are mentored by their current-leader coaches.

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