It’s been about five years now, including a degree at Harvard focused on longevity, demographics and the future of work, that I’ve ‘layered’ the topic of generational balance onto my 20 years of work on gender balancing the business world. It’s been a satisfying move, that has nourished me (and I hope a wider influence circle) with a dose of what I hunger for: the new, the next and the inevitable tide of change. The OECD has reported how much more engaged and fulfilled midlifers who change jobs and roles become. It’s true. I feel it and see it in clients who dare to change and grow - at any age.
But as I reach forward into the next massive 21st century shift, the rise of the ‘old,’ the last big demographic shift, the 20th century rise of women, keeps calling. It may all sound insignificant in the wider scheme of things, but I believe these are some of the underlying tectonic plates influencing the chaos, the divisiveness and the tribalism.
The Wider World
So here, in this year, this month, even this week of October 7th, that has us all hanging between an American election and wars escalating in several strategic corners of the world, I’m trying to focus on what I can do, rather than the billions I have zero impact on. Work keeps me steady and relatively optimistic. At least it gives me the illusion of progress.
The world is likely to be shaped for at least a generation by what happens in the next month. Like you, I’m sure, I spend endless hours reading the news, across as many different national outlets as my limited language skills allow (my regulars: FT, NYT, The Economist, Al Jazeera, Le Monde and a growing bunch of wonderful substacks). The media is getting a bit better at educating us on the inter-connectedness of the world’s chaotic hot spots. Although most conversations I’m part of take neither a very global or holistic view. The attraction of black and white thinking is sky high. Strong, authoritarian leaders love us stuck in simple, good-evil narratives.
Thanks to Céline, I’m reading a gripping novel about Putin, The Wizard of the Kremlin, that sheds an imagined insider perspective on recent history. It seemed like a good frame to think about the month to come. It’s certainly makes me feel incredibly naive.
But I have a (second) granddaugther who is likely to be born this coming week, and the world we are offering her needs our attention - not our despair. So as the tension rises, as grandiloquent as it may sound, I like to think both of my topics are in service to her - and the world to come.
So here’s how my focus for next month looks like, in a series of events and themes I’ll divide into the way I now segment my work: generational and gender balance. What are you focusing on this month? How do you hold steady?
Generational Balance
Among the corporate clients we’ve been engaging with on the longevity leadership topic is Scottish drinks leader AG Barr. An iconic national brand and company founded in 1875, they are among the first-mover, leading edge companies starting smart, by putting what I call a ‘Strategic Debate’ about the new demographics onto the ExCo agenda. It’s fascinating and shape-shifting.
For a company to design its longevity strategy, it first needs to build awareness and prepare leaders to address it. Like gender, the implications for a business of getting this right early are profound, and involve three levers: leadership, culture and systems. Here’s my visual summary of what’s required from my latest graphic book 5 Steps to Longevity Leadership (here a related FORBES article).
Interestingly, a lot of the first-mover companies I worked with on gender balance years ago, are now some of the first to get moving on generational balance too. I guess it’s no surprise that the most successful companies are often one step ahead of the game - on every issue.
I’ll be speaking about all of this in Milan October 16th at a very impressive (read slightly daunting) Leadership Forum run by Performance Strategies. On the biggest stage in Europe. Just saying. I’m pretty small. I’m telling myself this is a powerful way of getting a small person to put a big topic on the business and leadership agenda.
Luckily, I’ve been limbering up and testing my ideas and getting a lot of feedback from the various business schools I’ve been working with on the topic over the past couple of years. The teaching I’ve been doing at Oxford Saïd Business School, the Longevity Leadership programme I designed and co-direct at Catolica Lisbon, the Thriving To 100 midlife transition workshops I’ve been running for INSEAD alumni. I’ve now spoken to hundreds of leaders on the transformation ahead, comparable in impact to the AI shifts most of them are focused on.
It’s fascinating to see just how ‘new’ this topic is to most of them. And how impactful it is once you get them connecting the dots between global demographic change, their own personal life and career trajectories, and the consequences for their consumers, clients and teams.
Don’t Forget Gender Balance
And while I love the new work on longevity, the gender topic continues to sway hearts, minds and elections.
Gender is a powerful driver in this US election, as an article in the NYT makes clear. See How Gender Became the Election’s Crucial Fault Line. In it, Susan Faludi, author of the prescient 1991 book Backlash, and the equally premonitory Stiffed, who has tracked gender issues in America for more than 30 years, comments on Kamala’s already phenomenal success (whether or not she wins):
“I think Harris is doing something much more important than playing the woman card,” Faludi said. “If you look at the central planks of her platform, they are all what we used to call women’s issues — reproductive health care, medical care, child care, elder care. It’s an achievement that these are now regarded as foundational to Americans’ social and economic lives. That was the goal of the women’s movement — to change society by figuring out what the world would look like if women were treated as full citizens.”
I’m a big admirer of Faludi’s work and think she’s always been decades ahead of everyone else.
And speaking of my Q3 female heroes, I’m adding the astonishingly courageous Gisèle Pelicot. At the brave age of 72, she’s become a national heroine who may yet single handedly shift the gender conversation in France. This lady is forcing the 50 men who raped her while she lay drugged and unconscious (including her husband who orchestrated and then filmed the whole damn thing) to face up to their behaviour - in public. This is playing out across France as a mass lesson in the horrors of sexual abuse.
Rather than hide in shame behind closed doors, Pelicot has fought determinedly to get this entire case, including all its sordid details into the harsh light of day for all to witness. To put the shame where it belongs. And my god, there is a lot of it to go around. There’s reams of incriminating, unavoidable and entirely damning detail. The police found more than 20,000 (sic!) videos and photographs on her husband’s electronic devices, many in a digital folder titled “Abuse.” It’s like a national course in how sad and shameful sexual abuse is, and how many otherwise ‘good’ men, husbands and fathers, can get drawn into its seemingly addictive seductions - and film it! May it awake France to the work that remains in educating men (and women) about the realities of where we are on gender balance - and the road still ahead.
Not Just France
And if you are thinking this is a particularly French thing, think again. The UK Navy just a published a report looking at 6 years of complaints about abusive behaviours in their Submarine Service. If you want details, I wrote about it yesterday here and included an overview of how the world’s militaries have been trying to gender balance for a couple of decades now, with mixed results. And how it compares to the corporate world.
Much of this behaviour would now be unthinkable in your average well-run corporate. But it remains in organisations that are very hierarchical, very male dominated or very star-struck (like coaches in sport). I’ve been astonished at what I’ve been learning about some of what goes on in pockets of the NHS from the Women In Medicine conferences I’ve been speaking at. And I was just listening yesterday to similar challenges in an African NGO I’m on the Advisory Board of.
There is still decades of work to do. Gender balance, and all its associated culture shifts, takes years of unwavering leadership attention. In my experience, over several successive CEOs. If there is a break or a pause or a lessening of pressure, things slide backwards as quickly as you can say toxic masculinity (a term I recommend avoiding).
And where so much of the gender balance work in so many parts of the world still focuses on women, I think it’s increasingly clear that the parallel urgency is to focus on men. Bring them into the conversation, educate them, show them, like Gisele Pelicot has, the costs - to everyone - of gender imbalance.
I’ve just published an online course with DePaul University aimed at educating and engaging male managers in gender balance. It’s a microcredential certification course in Gender Balance as a Leadership Skill. Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you’d like more information.
But then, on this topic, as on so many others, this American election will decide the way the conversation will head in the years to come.
May it go your way.
And may we not lose our way in the meantime.
Thank you for capturing all these cross-currents. We do what we can. It may feel like trying to turn an ocean liner with a teaspoon. But if we all dip our teaspoons in the brine and pull the same way, change can happen.