The Baby Boomer Paradox
The problem is that you don’t know what you don’t know. A year ago I believed my 30 years of experience and University of Chicago MBA qualified me for a wide variety of senior management positions. But now that I’ve completed most of my Master’s in Internet Business (MIB) degree at ISDI Digital, I’ll admit that I was wrong.
Let’s call a spade a spade. A year ago, I possessed an inadequate understanding of the impact digital was having on business — the inescapable disruption affecting all businesses…big, small, high-tech, low tech. I was wholly unqualified to set the strategic direction for ANY business. Put simply, I didn’t have the digital knowledge to transform an “old school” company or to effectively manage at a newer “tech company”.
And, I contend that most of my Baby Boomer peers who currently clog America’s corner offices are equally unprepared due to their outdated knowledge and uninformed strategic visions.
This creates a paradox. Historically, the accumulated experience and wisdom of the oldest generation gave them the mandate to control the highest levels within American business. But I contend that this isn’t true anymore. So, what has changed? Why has this paradox not existed in the past?
Not all disruption is the same
There have been a plethora of disruptive technologies introduced throughout history… electricity, the internal combustion engine, penicillin, the telephone… to name just a few. But these technologies created new opportunities that created/disrupted single industries, not the entire economy.
The internal combustion engine created the automotive industry and disrupted the horse and buggy industry, but it didn’t affect newspapers or soap manufacturers. Penicillin changed the approach to medicine but had no impact on food manufacturers or carpenters. The telephone facilitated communication and disrupted the telegraph industry, but it didn’t impact the flour mill or the bucket manufacturer.
Other than perhaps computers, the internet is different. Unlike most past disruptive technologies, the digital disruption is affecting EVERY business. The way we sell, market, and communicate with our customers has all been turned on its head over the past ten years. Social media and the smart phone have permanently altered customer expectations, how they choose to acquire and disseminate information, and how they shop and ultimately vote with their pocketbooks.
I contend that this type of disruption has never been thrust on American business ever before… and it has all happened in a relatively short period of time… a small fraction of a generation.
And I further contend that the lack of a thorough understanding of how these changes impact American business and how current disruptive trends in e-commerce, data analytics, artificial intelligence — just to name a few — renders the average Baby Boomer senior executive wholly unprepared to lead.
The moment you stop learning is the moment you’re left behind
Although, on average, Baby Boomers possess the most wisdom and experience, they’re also the most digitally challenged (See Figure 1 below). Of course, there are exceptions, but like me (prior to my digital re-education) the vast majority of these Baby Boomer leaders lack the knowledge and understanding to manage effectively in the digital world. They’re not making the transformative changes their companies require to thrive, or even survive, in the modern digital world. This vacuum is holding back our economy.
These “old school” executives hoard cash and cling to the constructs that brought success in the past while ignoring the tsunami that’s lurking at their door. Paralyzed by their lack of digital understanding, they often fail to invest in the technologies, personnel, and corporate mind-shifts that are required to survive in the digital world.
Figure 1
The temptation is to put the digitally unenlightened Baby Boomers out to pasture and replace them with the more digitally savvy Generation X or Millennials. The problem with this solution is that, on average, the Baby Boomers possess the better skills and talent to digitally transform their companies with the single glaring exception of digital knowledge.
While Millennials contribute greatly to our economy, they, by definition, are under the age of 35 and, with few exceptions, simply don’t possess the experience or school-of-hard-knocks wisdom to take the reins. At the top end of Generation X are the 45–54 years old who often possess the experience, but are barely more digitally aware than their older Baby Boomer bosses.
The optimal solution is to provide the Baby Boomers, who on average possess the most wisdom, with the digital skills to transform their companies. To put it another way, you cannot magically give a 28-year-old Millennial instant experience and wisdom, but you can teach a Baby Boomer executive how to make superior decisions and provide leadership in a digital economy. This is why programs such as ISDI’s are so valuable and growing so fast.
Some Baby Boomers joined the tech industry early and have “ridden the wave”, absorbing the necessary knowledge along the way. Another group, like me, have accepted their technical limitations and returned to school to address their shortcomings. But members of the “Baby Boomer technically savvy club” remain the rare exception, and not the rule.
With technologies disrupting our business environment at a blinding pace, the modern career path must be sprinkled with additional cutting-edge learning… either on the job or in the classroom. The traditional 4-year college degree or MBA is no longer the ticket to long-term success (the topic of my next blog), it’s instead the knowledge baseline required to enable ongoing learning throughout a lifetime. Baby Boomers who take the time to update their knowledge so they can recognize and confront the digital disruption will be the winners over the next ten years.
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