One day you wake up and you're in your mid fifties. If you're lucky, you're still gainfully employed.
If you've done well in your career, you're likely at the top of your game. In some companies that might buy you respect, influence, and an opportunity to really make a difference.
Then there are the companies who are allergic to older managers. I once had an absolutely terrific manager who was in his mid-fifties. For years he had done an exceptional job in very challenging circumstances.
He worked very hard at solving problems, empowering his people, and doing his job well beyond the abilities of almost anyone. He was well respected by his people, his customers, and as far as any of us knew his boss.
At one time he had probably close to one hundred people reporting to him. I was one of his first line managers. Then one day he called me and said things were changing. Five new managers had been hired, and he would be reporting to one of them. There were changes for me also. I was going from having over fifteen employees to having under ten, and I was going to be the only direct report to him. In effect, though he kept his title of director, he had been demoted.
It was pretty clear that we had both been put in positions where the company hoped we both would leave.
Interestingly, all of the new managers were forty years old or younger. My manager and I were both in our fifties. We had a few choices, and we chose to buckle down and do the best job that we could given the circumstances.
My boss bent over backwards helping the new managers who were as clueless a group of managers as ever entered a company. They came as a group that had worked together in a software company. We were selling hardware. They only knew how to sell software. They had been selling a market leading product that most people couldn't do without. We were selling Apple computers which easily over ninety five percent of the world had decided they do could quite well without.
My boss watched them struggle and tried with a graciousness that they did not deserve to help them reach decisions. They took six months to come to conclusions that he had reached years ago. It didn't matter how much he helped or how well he did his job, they kept turning up the pressure on him. They were such slow learners that it was absolutely painful. Most of the time they opted for inventing a square wheel when a round one had been carefully positioned to appear to be their idea. It was a hopeless case, my boss just couldn't take watching the catastrophic level of incompetence. They hardly knew how to use the computers we were selling.
Eventually my boss negotiated an exit from the company. In the meantime, I had taken a tiny team and through their unbelievable efforts and focus accomplished a miracle in an area where our company was losing sales at the rate of 50% per year. Instead of losing sales we had grown the business in one of Apple's toughest markets over 60% in one year. It was pretty hard to ignore even though we had been set up to fail, we had been wildly successful.
My boss left, and I was grudgingly given a couple of additional resources. We turned around and grew the business even more than 60% the next year.
Of course the company had been ready for us, they had set our goal even higher. We grew our business far more than any other organization but we were not up to the impossible expectations that had been set for us. We still knew we had done an outstanding job, but we just hadn't made as much money as we should have. It was a plan, don't pay them like they should be paid, and they will eventually leave. Unfortunately we were very dedicated to doing our jobs and loved what we were doing.
Of course it didn't stop with pay, the screws kept being turned. It took them a couple of years to get me but they did. It wasn't pretty and a lot of people got hurt, and some are still feeling the unreasonable pressure.
It didn't have to happen. But in the world of cronyism, the most important measure of your success is how many of your old buddies you can place around you. The replacement cronies haven't been nearly as successful as we were even with a massive increase in resources.
Unbelievably companies don't necessarily value expertise, success, or even wisdom. They have other agendas. If the profit still comes, the cronyism becomes an affordable perk to some. In fact some companies are more like a country club than a business. If it is okay to appoint cronies at the highest level in government, it is more than okay for some companies to build their businesses with people whose only real success has been getting to know the right people. Often these folks are hired more for the game they talk rather than the game they actually play.
Unfortunately companies are often able to hide dysfunctional business units. The reality is that just as companies benefit from having a racially diverse workforce, they also benefit from having a workforce that spans generations. Plenty of studies have shown older workers to be reliable. It is undeniable that older workers and managers can and do add much value to the companies if they are only given the chance. It's amazing that some believe that only young workers are worth the investment.
As the coming labor force crunch arrives, many of these companies just may have to eat a little crow.
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