In the category “things I should have written about ages ago but somehow forgot”, I have the huge pleasure of reporting that Bob Morison and Tammy Erickson, current and long-time colleagues from The Concours Group and in other ways excellent people, have been awarded the 2004 McKinsey Award for one of the best articles in the Harvard Business Review. The article, It’s time to retire retirement, is the result of a Concours research project called Demography is De$stiny (management summary), done in collaboration with Ken Dychtwald and his company AgeWave.
The project studied the implications of the rather alarming demographic evolution of the USA and Europe. The average American and European is getting older, and, as has been heavily debated in many newspaper articles, there is a problem in finding enough people who can work to finance social welfare system we have come to depend on. This is not news, but very few companies are acting on it – and the article points to the need for companies to stop pushing out old people and instead find innovative ways of making use of their capabilities as the workforce ages.
Incidentally – I think I can take credit for suggesting (but not inventing) the boiled frog analogy.)