In 1969 the first man walked on the moon. To get there,
he and his team flew in Apollo 11, which used a six-million pound Saturn 5
booster rocket to launch them outside the Earth's atmosphere. By the time the
astronauts had returned the entire rocket system been cut loose and
discarded. It had done its vital job well, but it was now no longer of any use.
Flash forward to 2024, when one-quarter of the US workforce will be age 55 or
older. Old enough to have been alive during that long ago moonwalk — and many
of them fear that they too are about to be discarded. They're not wrong. Too often
American companies write off their older workers. Current popular perception is
that all innovative risk takers are 20 year-olds wearing hoodies. At 30 you're
edging towards irrelevance. At 35 you're over the hill. Over 45? You're first in
line for the next axe swing. After all, as Mark Zuckerberg once famously said, "Young
people are just smarter." So why should you listen to a 55 year old woman tell
you that's wrong? Well, for the past 25 years I've led teams that launched new
companies, opened up untapped markets and turned around projects gone terribly
wrong. For the past 10 years I've studied how businesses successfully navigate
through change. And I work in an industry that's undergoing seismic
technologically-driven change as I speak so have a bit of a stake in the outcome.
And I'm telling you that we're wrong about how we look for answers. Now, over
the past 30 years attitudes about the value of age and experience in business
have changed. Older workers are marginalized as non-digital natives. Yet
at the same time, many of them are stitching together frantically the
fabric of a safety net that holds their families together, including their
parents and even those adult children who like to boomerang back into the
basement. They're not leaving corporate America
for startups any time soon, which is a good thing because most startup founders
don't want them, because hey, they're old. And we over-50-year-olds, after being
constantly told how irrelevant we are, we tend to say things like, "Been there, done
that. It's not going to work." And we say that a
lot especially to people wearing hoodies. Meanwhile, companies desperately
compete for younger graduates frantically revamping their corporates
career landing pages to depict their widget making company as a dynamic
hotbed of innovation. Unfortunately for them they too were seen as dinosaurs and
they tend to be where those older workers hang out. So, not so good. So
corporations and workers are locked in a soulless, vicious cycle, desperately
waiting until some youthful innovator comes along with a better, faster, cheaper
way to make the widgets. Well Ok Boomer. You all need to get out. Well that's
already been tried. In 2016 Harvard and the Rand Corporation did a study that
predicted that 11% of the US GDP per capita was lost over the past decade due
to older workers leaving the workforce. And predicted an additional 6% being
lost over the next 10 years. Turns out the old geezers weren't just
productive they actually lifted the productivity of those around them. So
that's not going to work, no matter how attractive it might be. So let's look
back at the space program. By 1981 manned space travel had evolved to the space
shuttle, which sported a different type of booster rocket. Once this job was done,
two minutes into the launch it was jettisoned into the ocean where it was
recovered, refurbished and reused. Now those of you that were 38 and older, you
were around for that leap forward. So I ask you
instead of discarding today's existing workforce like the used up booster
rocket of 1969, why don't we refurbish and we use them?
Better yet why don't we tap some of that experience from their years of
experience. And we haven't really begun to know what that looks like, but in our
verve for startups many studies have shown that successful young startup
founders often have a significant financial cushion from parents or other
sources which means they're not gonna be on the street if they fail. And yet this
innovation we see is not actually a product of youth. The average age of a
successful startup founder is 45 and prior industry experience is a key
factor in that success. But we don't often hear that story do we? Now back in
the day before an app was the solution to all workplace woes, companies relied
on their workers, their research and their customers to determine their next
steps. If we look at data and technology as the tools they are, and they're great
tools, but not as the answer, we can come up with better solutions to our most
challenging problems. Now to do this companies might convene micro teams of
truly diverse workers with ages, ethnicities, educational backgrounds,
personalities, work roles to set aside time and the work day to focus on
obstacles, unmet customer needs or even the future direction of the business.
Combining the experience of the older workers with the fresh perspectives of
the younger workers. Now, studies have shown that these teams are most
effective when they focus on a single expansion or a single problem. You can
even have five to ten teams working on the same issue and compete with each
other. Corporate Hackathons have attempted to do this but this needs to
go deeper and become a more permanent part of the business fabric.
Think of it as an ongoing innovation incubator. Some companies have even opted
to take workers and put them on a specific project for a period of up to
12 weeks in order to generate ideas within a defined time frame. And that's
smart because it takes a real commitment for leaders and for workers to set aside
all the everyday business concerns and focus on the future. And there's a risk.
But consider this. Harvard professor Shikhar Ghosh found
that 95% of venture capital backed start-ups failed to ever deliver their
proposed return on investment. I believe companies could become those dynamic
hotbeds of innovation they like to depict on their websites by redeploying
their existing workforce and focusing on innovation, using entrepreneurial
techniques inside the company. First we teach the dinosaurs how to dance, and
then we remind them how to fly. It might mean changing the direction you're going
in. It might even mean dismantling something you have spent your life's
work building. And I say that as a girl who's not crazy about taking risks. When
local restaurant cooks see me come around the corner, they slap my order on
the grill. I am that predictable. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
But I don't want to stagnate at work. So about eight years ago I wanted to increase
my technology skills and a friend suggested that I look at a local meetup
in Atlanta where I live. So I signed up for a meetup... in Brussels, Belgium. Now this
technology meetup had several outstanding things going for it. Number
one it was in Brussels where I knew absolutely nobody so zero risk if I
flamed out and was laughed out of the building. Number two it was in English, big plus. And
number three, it appeared to be near a metro stop, also a big plus. So the day
came and I dutifully navigated to the address on the invitation, and when I got
there I looked up and there was a long brick wall. No door, just
a long brick wall on a long dark street. I rechecked my map and I debated. I was in
a foreign country, not speaking either of their two major languages alone at dark
in a neighborhood I wasn't too certain of. And just as I was about to leave a
man came up and he also looked a little confused about the whole brick wall
thing, he was looking for the meetup too, but he turned to me and said in English
maybe there's a door around the side. Now I did that quick mental thing that all
women do where we calculate out, is this guy the Belgium Jack the Ripper? Should I
go? But he passed the test. So I went around the side and sure enough there
was a door. Now inside this technology meetup were people much younger than I
was, and far more technologically savvy than I was and most were speaking in
Dutch or French. Our presenter was a very well known, extremely successful
technology entrepreneur, who gave an amazing presentation. But at one point
during the presentation a question came up that was right in my field of non
technical expertise, and so I answered it. And after that a long discussion came
around, and it wound up in me being asked back to present on Intrapreneurship
techniques in the Government sector the following year. And since then, those
two events have resulted in ongoing exchange and partnership of ideas for
the past eight years. Being a non-digital native didn't mean I had nothing to
offer, but if I had let my fear get to me that day what would I have missed.
I nearly left that day. Working in unfamiliar territory in uncertain times
it's scary, but embracing change is the way to go and one of the best ways to do
that is on a team of intrapreneurs. So you might say what's in it for the
company? First of all the company gets an engaged workforce that's actively
embracing change. If a curve ball comes from an external disruptor you have a
team that is more flexible, better able to adapt and even
be redeployed to other roles within the company because they have a broader,
deeper, knowledge base. In addition employees make relationships across the
enterprise, which strengthens all future projects and can even help with
retention. And you don't lose the wisdom gained in a company over time. Employers
can do this and employees wind up writing their own future. By grabbing
innovation as a chance to get, do, and be better when a challenge arises. And just
like with startups, there's a chance it might not work. But the teams will be
better, the adaptability will be better, and the ideas will be better, which
brings me to Space X. About eight years ago Space X began launching the Falcon 9
rocket, which uses a reusable booster rocket which flies back to be reused.
Now they've tested this in over half of their launches as of early 2020, and it's
been successful the majority of those times. And it greatly reduces the cost of
space travel as well as launches. We are all going to have to learn to fly like
the Falcon 9. And then we can truly say because we'll be more adaptable and much
more productive as we live longer. Been there. Done that. Not done yet.
Thank you.