Wrapping Up
A Season, Some Gifts & Against the Cold
Before I can really settle into holiday preparations, every December I need to first prepare my beloved’s birthday which falls rather inconveniently on the 13th. I always felt sorry for how short-changed the December babies inevitably are, and how they are competing with a lot of trees and stockings and candle-lighting. Not to mention the hordes of Santa Clauses appearing on London’s Southbank (and in Manhattan) this weekend for Santacon, a red-bedecked pub crawl. So I always try and make it a bit special.
Usually, that involves some travel. But we want to do less of that, so this year it’s making the most of the city we live in. It’s fun to have London as your stage set, of course. It’s easy to make a weekend sing. The dog was farmed out to her favourite neighbours, and the design of a perfect birthday holiday-at-home could begin. It had to involve old friends and delicious dinners. Young friends and inter-generational birthday song (over Curly Whirly cake from Konditor, of course). A bit of art (the impressive African photography exhibition at the Tate) topped off with lunch (at the delicious Kitchen & Bar overlooking St Paul’s), and a quick dive into the Barge House to hear Ben Okri talk about his latest book, Tiger Work. We also had to get the latest on the film scene, and how to define a life, so Napoleon at the IMAX to benchmark with emperors (the French critics panned it, and they are right), and Maestro at the historic Olympic Studios in Barnes to see how a musical genius managed it (beautifully, but needs better scriptwriting). And because at our age it’s important to design in a bit of humour, and stay in tune with the fluidity of the times, we’ll round it off with Australian comedian, Reuben Kaye at the Royal Festival Hall playing The Butch is Back… Ya gotta love London at holiday time.
Usually at this time of year, I start to wrap up not only holiday gifts but also the year. I love to look back and digest what happened, what didn’t and what I think of it all. More of the whole year later, but I’ll start with the fun and lessons from the 4-Quarter Lives podcast I launched a short year ago. We’re (already) finishing Season 4 and reaching ever larger audiences from around the globe.
As I look back over these conversations, it’s like a deep dive course in all things longevity. So I thought I’d try and extract some of the juice and connect the dots across so much rich input, and distill the learning. My focus for the season was: how are companies and countries adapting to longevity – if at all. And to illustrate some of the early leaders and learn from their innovations.
COUNTRIES FIRST
To give some context to the size and scale of the global longevity shift, 3 podcasts looked at how longevity is playing out around the world.
We started with Haleh Nazeri, and the World Economic Forums’ recent report she directed, called Living Longer, Better – Understanding Longevity Literacy. It explored how literate – or not – people of different ages around the world are about the new longevity. She highlighted that while people under 40 may dream of retiring in their 60s, people over 40 usually don’t. They expect both to keep working – and caring for their elders. To better manage the 3rd Quarter of our lengthening lives, we’ll need to become much more ‘longevity literate.’ Which means understanding, planning and pacing lives, love, work and money - for the long haul.
We then zoomed into one particularly fast-ageing part of the world, Asia, with Philip O’Keefe who directs the Australian-based Ageing Asia Research Hub (aka CEPAR). Asia is on an accelerated journey of so many things. We’ve long watched its extraordinary economic growth. Now, we’re seeing it accelerating in other areas that have taken far longer in the West. Namely demographics, ageing populations and plummeting fertility levels. The speed at which this region is shifting, shrinking and reshaping is astonishing. The big 3 headlines?
China started to demographically shrink in 2022;
India has overtaken China to become the world’s most populous country;
and South Korea is leading the world in tumbling fertility rates - and no babies. They are down to 0.8 births per women, when the replacement ratio that keeps population stable is 2.1.
The consequences of these three trends will be felt for decades to come.
Finally, we zoomed a bit further in, to a country that is taking an extraordinarily proactive and strategic approach to longevity, with Dr Emi Kiyota from Singapore’s National University. Singapore is taking a whole-of-government and whole-of-life approach to longevity, including rethinking the whole idea of what we call ‘nursing homes.’ Dr Kiyota is bringing in a concept she developed in Japan, called Ibasho, which flips the script. Instead of caring for elders, it’s the elders who care for us. She’s created an Ibasho community centre in Singapore that opens right about now, at the end of 2023. She shares how this enlivens and contributes to knitting together entire communities.
So, given this context of fast-ageing countries striving to get governments as longevity literate as the one in Singapore, what is the corporate sector doing?
COMPANIES NEXT
We started with a global overview on the evolving workforce from James Root, of Bain & Co. And the challenge of attracting, retaining and engaging the growing percentage of their talent pools over 50. The research, Better With Age, The Rising Importance of Older Workers, asked a lot of people, (some 40K in 19 countries) a simple but fundamental question: ‘why do you go to work?’ They helpfully came up with 6 archetypes, which could be applicable in any organisation.
‘Pioneers and Strivers often become Givers and Artisans’ in later life. This one is essential listening for anyone planning their future people strategies.
These archetypes help remind us that workforces and Q3ers aren’t a homogeneous population. They are as diverse as any other age group, so companies will need to finetune their approach to managing across generations.
Schneider Electric offered a good model. This French multinational has introduced a global programme, FUTURE READY, focused on its 50+ employees. The company had found that employee engagement fell significantly in the fifties and wanted to address this, especially given the talent wars raging around the company. Integral to the programme is to ensure that every employee, at any age and stage, is engaged in conversations about their career over the next decade. They found that there were 4 profiles to their Q3ers – those who wanted to CONTINUE, those who wanted to ACCELERATE, to PIVOT and to RETIRE. That’s a pretty good summary of the range of motivations, and a helpful normalising of the multiplicity of choices in Q3.
While a lot of the conversation in companies around longevity starts on the talent side, the flip side of the equation is the market side – and how companies are integrating the reality of their ageing customers, clients and stakeholders of all kinds.
Lisa Edgar, Chief Customer Officer of the SAGA Group was the perfect expert to be explaining the subtleties and preferences of the Q3 consumer. SAGA is specialised in services to Q3 clients, with both leisure and financial services as their pillar. Their ad campaigns center around the idea that ‘experience is everything’ while the business recognises that Q3ers in their early 60s concentrate wealth and spending in the UK. In fact the wealthiest segment of the UK’s population are those aged 60 to 64. She suggests it’s time to let go of age and obligatory, sequential stages as segmentation categories for brands. But take a much more holistic, inter-generational and inclusive approach when trying to understand emerging realities. Age just isn’t what it used to be. Although she did admit that reality and physicality does start to hit – eventually. And that Q3 and Q4 are pretty fair delimiters of a true tipping point in many lives. By 75 or 80, most of us will be slowing down and shifting our priorities.
As companies start to wake up to this massive shift, consulting firms are emerging to accompany them, and also to measure their progress. We talked to two of them, one in the UK and one in France.
In the UK, Lyndsey Simpson, CEO of 55Redefined, puts it simply and powerfully. “If you don’t have a longevity strategy,” she says, “you don’t have a growth strategy.” Her company serves both the talent side of the challenge, with a jobs and community platform for the 55+ as well as a consulting side helping companies get longevity properly prioritised and addressed. She’s even building a certification system for companies that will publically recognise and award them ‘longevity-ready’ status.
In France, Sibylle Le Maire founded the Club Landoy. She has brought together 47 of the countries top CEOs to define and implement a 10-point Longevity Charter. With companies like L’Oreal and insurer AXA in the lead. This sort of initiative really helps raise awareness in the private sector and build leadership skills around how to position and address the issue. It is likely to become the next sort of Good Place To Work dimension, Best Places for the 50+ just watch.
What It Means for Individuals & Careers
Finally, what’s the impact on our careers – and career prospects? Because this is still a big challenge. Ageism and gendered ageism are the default norm that we need to update and uproot. It’s both a somewhat dire picture, but one that some helpful research is emerging to address.
Some of the clearest data on this comes from a recent OECD report called the Midlife Career Opportunity. It was co-authored by Generation, a non-profit that helps both young people and mid-career workers transition to new work. Mona Mourshed, the CEO of Generation, explains the report’s findings and what Q3ers might want to know when seeking to pivot. Namely, that there is a complete misunderstanding and misalignment of what’s valued by workers and employers. The latter don’t really care if you have 5 years experience – or 25. While workers think that’s their most valuable asset. What employers care about is that you’ve updated your skills, are open to learning and technology, and have proved it with recent certifications and upskilling. That’s not hard to do, but better to know it before you start vaunting your decades of experience to a sceptical hiring manager, rolling their eyes and concluding you’re ‘over-qualified.’
Finally, I end with one of the biggest challenges on the ageism front, is the gendered variety. Julie Miller is AARP’s Director of Thought Leadership for Financial Resilience has recently published two reports about Q3 women. Unleashing the Economic Power of Older Women, and How Women 50+ Are Driving the Global Economy. Much marketing and messaging has long ignored the older women, despite the blue ocean of opportunity she represents for a vast range of companies. Women make up the majority of older adults, live longer than men, make most of the purchasing decisions, hold much of the assets, but are confronted with a series of challenges. From gender pay gaps, they graduate to gender pension gaps. From non-linear careers and more time in caring roles – for kids, parents then partners – they end up without enough financial resilience for their own later lives. While 80% of men die married, 80% of women die single. It’s time to better understand and serve this vast community. We’ll be focusing on this more in Season 5.
So that’s a wrap
This season is pretty good example of what I’ve been aiming to do with 4-Quarter Lives. Chart the impact of the new longevity on careers, companies and countries and the complexity and inter-relationships between these areas. And how generational balance is to the 21st century what gender balance was to the 20th. A massive economic, social and political opportunity. If we proactively prepare for the 2nd billion by learning our lessons from the first.
I hope you will check it out if you haven’t yet, and find it as fascinating as I have – and that you’ll join me for Season 5, coming to your favourite podcast platform this January. Even better, please share with anyone you think might be interested, that would be hugely appreciated.
Right now, let me sign off wishing you, wherever in the world you are, a couple of quiet weeks of wrapping up whatever you have been doing, putting a bow on something for someone, and staying warm walking through a bit of fresh air.
The Beat Goes On
Because all of what we spend our lives and love on is over-shadowed daily by the news, here’s one of the better articles I’ve read on the Israeli - Hamas conflict and what it is doing to all the rest of us, especially intellectuals (and Presidents) in universities, hapless witnesses of history unfurling. Titled The war between Israel and Hamas fractures the intellectual world ($), it powerfully presents the debating blocs: the black and white taking-of-sides of almost the entire world, along the strange interpretive lens of colonialism (the young, the global south) vs extermination. Including its impact on feminists, as they too take sides, when I would have dreamt that women would have led the way towards more balanced perspectives. Women are getting strangely hung on a loud argument around competing narratives of victimhood. We are, sadly, not yet ready or powerful enough to build a bridge between the world’s angry and destructive narratives.
