Why Wait for a Mid-Career Crisis?
I am a voracious reader and a student of management. And I am a big fan of Peter Drucker, the eternal management guru.
The reason why I wanted to do the SAP Social Sabbatical has a lot to do with some of the lessons I learnt from Peter Drucker’s books.
The first lesson is the necessity for today’s knowledge workers to get into voluntary social work. At some point of time in our careers, between the ages 35–45, we are going to experience vertical and horizontal stagnation despite our best efforts at work, leading to a mid-career crisis. Only a few among us will go on to become CEOs, CFOs, CTO, CSOs and other c-level executives. Most of the times this is because what is required to succeed at those level is completely different from what made us successful until now. It requires the ability to manage much higher levels of stress, to take higher levels of risks, to make personal sacrifices, to have an external market focus, to have expertise in an upcoming field, to adapt communication to a much wider range of audience etc. Given the rate at which new technologies are emerging today, experienced experts are in constant pressure to prove their market value. Especially in the field of technology and digitization, young graduates from universities come equipped with the latest trends and skills and are also less expensive than experienced employees. During such periods, knowledge workers get frustrated and start raising questions about their careers and roles in their societies. And it usually takes several months of deep introspection after which they realize they need to find new meaning and purpose for the second stage of their careers.
Drucker says that the only way out of this vertical stagnancy for today’s experienced knowledge workers is to involve themselves in voluntary social activities, which gives them a sense of purpose, achievement, recognition and appreciation. This voluntary work is not just limited to working for a nonprofit, but also includes engaging in voluntary activities within one’s own company like improving certain processes, facilities, mentoring, coaching etc. Most of today’s societal problems can be effectively solved only by knowledge workers who can apply their experience gained by working in organizations such as business and services.
On the other hand, working for nonprofits provide knowledge workers with secondary career options. With today’s increased life expectancy, knowledge workers in developed countries live up to the ages of 85 or 90, implying a life span of 25 years post their professional retirement. During this period, knowledge workers still crave for an active role in society. And what better opportunity than to apply their wisdom and experience to contribute to social causes?
Inspired by Drucker, I resolved to get into social voluntary work as early as possible. Until now, my voluntary activities were limited to organizing and moderating sports events for my local sports club. In recent times I have involved myself in mentoring younger colleagues, especially in the vast area of soft skills. But I needed to get into something bigger. I was not sure what it was. And then came the opportunity in the form of Social Sabbatical.
I got the opportunity to work for a month for a nonprofit in Tunisia named Fondation Tunisie Pour La Developpement, to boost their Elife program, aimed at building technology centers for the youth in ten of the most marginalized and disadvantaged regions in the interior of Tunisia. These centers will, among other things, aim to upgrade young graduates in order to increase their chances of finding a job through a training program. As member of a team of 3 SAP catalysts, part of my deliverables was to come up with recommendations to improve this training program and its placement rate.
The second reason is the many management lessons in the context of services (public institutions, governments, nonprofits etc.) which I had learnt in theory but had not seen in practice because I did not encounter those conditions in my daily life. I will write more on these in my next blog.
SAP Social Sabbatical has provided me with the much-needed impetus that I was looking for. I intend to capitalize on this momentum and contribute to more social voluntary work in the future. After all, why wait for a mid-career crisis, when you can try to avoid it?
