From Pyramids to Squares - The World is Reshaping. The new demographics of the world are reshaping countries and companies. The twin drivers of ageing populations and tumbling fertility rates mean our old demographic pyramids are morphing into squares. The world’s second billion people over 60 are on the calendar while babies are an ever-rarer glimmer in a parental eye. China’s population is shrinking, India has overtaken it as the most populous country on the planet and South Korea claims the lowest fertility rate on the planet. Talent wars are heating up, longevity economies are blossoming and retirement ages trend resolutely upwards. The consequences of these profound global shifts on companies, careers and consumers are profound – and just beginning to hit the mainstream media and filter into government agendas. The conversation hasn’t yet really hit the leadership agenda in most companies. It’s time.

Three changes are required for businesses to adjust to this 21st century global shift – leadership, culture and systems.

  • Leadership - Building Longevity Literacy. Leaders will need to understand the implications and opportunities of the global demographic shifts underway and how they impact both their markets and talent. They will want to build management skills to serve 4-Quarter consumer segments and manage multi-generational workforces.
  • Culture – Becoming Longevity Fluent: Old paradigms and management mindsets need to adapt to new realities. The conscious and unconscious ageism permeating today’s working cultures needs addressing and updating. Intentional inter-generationality will need to be mainstreamed transversally across functions and departments. Managers will want to be fluent across generations and life stages.
  • Systems – Updating to Intergenerational Defaults: Systems designed for yesterday’s youth-dominated consumer realities and shorter, linear careers will need to be redesigned. Ageing consumers and workforces will demand new attitudes to age and stage, and whole-of-life approaches to everything from marketing and product innovations to recruiting, career management and people development.

The 5 Steps

Here are five steps to powerfully getting the longevity topic onto your leadership agenda – and framing it strategically. The goal is for your longevity strategy to fuel your growth strategy, rather than sap it. Ignoring the seismic shifts reshaping the foundations on which business models have been erected is increasingly risky. But to make the most of the blue oceans opened by this new world, you need to position and launch it properly. How you introduce the issue, who drives it, and how it is framed are key success factors in tapping the potential dividend this new Age of Longevity offers.

  1. Start Smart – Measure the Impact (& Potential). The temptation and the call being heard in many discussions is to add ‘age’ to the already long list of diversity dimensions. While a convenient way to say you are addressing the issue, this isn’t the best way to start. Passing this on to your DEI team will not get leaders to assess the opportunities and impacts of the New Demographics – and the resourcing and adaptation they require. It isn’t about ageism, DEI and the latest identity, nor about being nice to and accommodating to older people. Instead, it’s the biggest demographic trend of the century, opening huge economic and social opportunities for both organizations and individuals. Leaders will want to be ready and equipped to describe these exciting demographics and engage their organizations in positioning themselves to seize the opportunities it opens.
  2. Get Leaders Longevity Literate. Prepare leaders to engage knowledgeably with the New Demographics and the impact and opportunity for your business and markets. Submit the analysis from Step 1 to the Executive Team and organise a 1-day Strategic Debate on Longevity Leadership. Awaken leadership teams to the data, the potential and the risks. Everyone is ageing, but who thinks it’s their business? It affects everyone, of every age, every sector, in every country… With the global context, the market segmentation data and the employee profiling, include a longevity lens focus on countries or products that are at the heart of the company’s strategic focus in the coming few years. Ensure you include both sides of the demographic coin – the internal talent side and the external, market facing side. Align the Executive Team on forecasting how impactful this issue is for their business and markets. What’s the opportunity of seizing the full opportunities of the longevity economy and leading in your sector? What are the risks of ignoring it? How do they define the business case and can they articulate it powerfully? Skill them up at implementing the required changes.
  3. Make Cultures Longevity Fluent. Organisations will want to build and embed longevity fluency to work across life stages and generations, in the same way they work across global cultures and languages. They will want to skill up on a new way to talk about age, stage, older workers, younger people, longevity and how it relates to their customers and talent. They will want to move from the staid and boring gerontocracy vocabulary based on age, towards a new, more active invitation to engage across the 4-Quarters of 100-year Lives, where each Quarter has its own priority, motivations and needs.
    1. Q1 (0-24) - Learning
    2. Q2 (25-49) - Achieving
    3. Q3 (50-74) - Becoming
    4. Q4 (75-100) - Harvesting
    The business world has historically been designed and focused around Q2. Marketing and services are aimed at the growth potential of the younger, rising segment of consumers. While careers are designed for a fast, linear, up-or-out progression that tapers post-50. The emergence of a new, more engaged Q3, where people will work and engage longer and where purchasing power is concentrated in the hands of Q3 consumers is not yet reflected in the way companies address either their talent or their potential customers. Longer lives and careers are only an opportunity if they are perceived that way. This shift in mindsets will require skilled and intentional attention.
  4. Adapt Sales & Marketing Systems to 4-Quarter Customers. Companies will want to assess the potential of their business’ longevity economy. Much of today’s focus is on the traditional younger market segments – who in the past reflected the future sustainability of any business. They were the next majority of customers who had to be brought into the brand and the services. But now that purchasing power is concentrated in the hands of the 50+ whose life expectancy keeps rising, should this focus be updated? What if your average 50-year old client could be with you for another … 40 years? Are you good at attracting, retaining and extending these client relationships across life phases?
    Much of the Q3 market, especially women, increasingly don’t see themselves as ‘old’ and don’t feel reflected or understood in many of today’s products, marketing and services. From noisy restaurants and anti-ageing cosmetics, to financial services geared to obsolete life phases and youth-addled tech that thinks the 50+ are the (ancient) past, the powerful midlife consumer is an opportunity waiting to be seized by first-movers who embrace the vast potential of Q3 consumers and recognise their distinct needs and motivations.
  5. Build & Skill Generationally Balanced TALENT
    The workforce is ageing and the ratio of talent in Q2 vs Q3 is balancing. A recent BAIN & Co. report showed over a quarter of the workforce in G7 countries will be over 55 by 2031. Pew Research shows the US’ “older workforce” (age 65+) has quadrupled since the mid-1980s while workers 75+ are the fastest-growing workforce segment. Peter Drucker predicted decades ago that generational balance between Q2 and Q3 would become the norm – and that Q3ers would have very different needs, priorities and motivators than Q2ers. He has been proven right.

Reports from the World Economic Forum and the OECD are starting to reveal just how unconsciously ageist and unprepared the business world is for this ageing workforce. Recruiting, retaining and developing talent across Q2 and Q3 will not be the same game. Understanding and anticipating the differences will become key to talent management. Flexibility in career patterns and shapes are a key requirement. The old linear, upwardly angled career trajectory – and the systems that underpin it - will need redesigning.

The world is ageing and reshaping predictably – and shockingly. It’s not really new, but it’s becoming news. It’s been in the demographic data for years, now it’s climbing onto the headlines, and showing up in your own employee, and customer data – not to mention your pension liabilities. Like climate change, the reality of our demographic future is moving slowly but surely towards us.

What you do with that knowledge will be the key to your organisation’s future success. Seize it as one of the century’s most seismic shifts, and you will have the time and space to respond and delight customers and talent by anticipating their needs and preparing for their new, longer lives and careers.

The five simple steps described here will get the issue onto the agenda in a timely and strategic way. Start smart and avoid some of the predictable distractions and divisiveness that inter-generational conflict can inflame. Humans have been gifted an extra three decades of life expectancy. Leading companies will help us figure out how to get the best out of these bonus years. And their bottom lines will benefit.