There has recently been a lot of interest in how millennials and boomers can better get along with one another. In fact, rather than working alongside one another, the two demographic groups are often known to blame the other for their dissatisfaction with life. Boomers often complain about the millennials’ lack of loyalty and work ethics; while the millennials usually perceive the older group as dinosaurs whose reluctance to retire accounts for the high percentage of youth unemployment.

As a recent Globe and Mail article commented, young people are regularly maligned for being self absorbed and entitled; not willing to “pay their dues;” and impatient to get the promotions and compensation they feel they deserve. Consequently, the widely held sentiment is that they cannot be counted on to stay in one company for long, nor ever be loyal to the company. However, boomers’ definition of loyalty may, perhaps, need to be redefined. Take me, for an example – I’ve worked with only two firms in my professional consultancy career: one for 12 years and the other for close to 18 years. The first one is a global leader in my field and offered me a one-year training program in New York City when I first started out in my career. Thereafter, it had been a vertical trajectory in my career path within that organization in Asia and North America. The second organization, from which I retired, is a national pioneer and leader in Canada. I was made a partner in its largest office in Toronto – the first woman and the first visible minority – after three years with the firm. There were lots of temptations during my 18-year tenure there to move elsewhere or to start my own business. But, the firm always gave me opportunities to grow and learn, and to take up new challenges just at the time when I might feel bored and itchy to move. So when I was working there, loyalty meant a “lifer” with the company.

But the millennials’ frame of reference is very different – they think of being tied to an organization in terms of months, not years. Career employees are no longer dreaming of the day they retire with gold watches at the age of 65 or even younger. Today’s millennial employees are probably thinking of themselves more as free agents. They get bored easily and are always looking for variety and exciting opportunities. They do not want to be stuck with only one-track responsibilities. They want plenty of opportunities to learn and have fun at the same time. While boomers are, very often, workaholics, millennials want more work-life balance instead. Employers need to showcase a work-hard, play-hard environment, and flexibility is key. Even then, you can’t expect your employees to be with you forever because most of them won’t. If you do all the right things to motivate your millennial employees, you might get them for at best three years.

A major TV news outlet recently contacted me to gauge my interest in joining a millennial-boomer duo panel on a weekly basis to discuss topics such as the purchase of a home in your 30s or when is the right age to get married. The TV program is still work in progress, but I think the media outlet understands that this would generate interest among both demographics. Points of view will, of course, differ between the two generations and, at times, there might even be a showdown.

The best approach, however, is to create opportunities for boomers and millennials to work harmoniously with and learn from one another. The Hollywood movie, The Intern, featuring Robert De Niro as the intern and Anne Hathaway as the millennial boss, has now become reality. According to The New York Times, a few enlightened U.S. companies have already paired older executives with junior workers so that the latter could mentor the former. Millennial mentors, as many companies call them, are being pulled into formal corporate programs to give advice to the top ranks of their companies. Some executives want the views of young people on catering to new markets and developing new products; while others are simply looking for glorified tech support – Snapchat 101, Twitter tutorials and emoji lessons.

Renowned companies such as Mastercard, Cisco Systems and Mars Inc. have experimented with these mentoring programs. The same New York Times article reported that the chief executive of insurer Lloyd’s of London has said that her 19-year-old junior mentor has a totally different perspective and leaves her inspired. Even Gen-Xer managers are catching on. David Watson, 38, a managing director at Deutsche Bank, who has been mentored by a 29-year-old engineer in the Wall Street bank’s global markets technology division, said that he’s been given good tips for retaining young employees, like giving them more flexible work-from-home arrangements, and with helping him spot trends in the financial tech industry.

Reverse mentoring – younger people training older workers – is apparently not a brand new concept. In the 1990s, Jack Welch, the then chief executive of General Electric, required 500 of his top managers to pair up with junior workers to learn how to use the internet.  Boomer executives are now obsessed with better understanding millennials. It was reported that millennial consultants now advise companies like Oracle, Estee Lauder and HBO, charging as much as U.S.$20,000 per hour to give executives advice on marketing their products to young people. Overall, American organizations spent about U.S.$80 million on “generational consulting” last year, according to Source Global Research, a firm that studies the consulting industry.

Rather than hiring outside young consultants, many companies prefer to use the young people already on the payroll. Instead of a top-down management hierarchy, mature senior executives find sitting down with someone who’s on the org chart six levels down an educational experience. The traditional mentoring benefit remains in place so that millennials continue to learn from more experienced corporate leaders. But mentoring in both directions helps improve relationships and encourage collaboration within the organization. Instead of a showdown or a blame game, millennials and boomers can definitely co-exist in the workplace in harmony.

It’s encouraging to see that The Economist has been focusing more on the positive aspects of aging populations in the last few years. As recently as three years ago in April 2014, the publication has dedicated a cover story to “A Billion Shades of Grey,” advocating changes in government policies to help accommodate the aging population. But the tone of that cover issue was more doom and gloom than positive – the concern about economic stagnation caused by the huge wave of baby boomers’ retirement was loud and clear in that story.

Then, in the April 9, 2016 edition of The Economist, the tone has become more positive with the article titled, “Older Consumers Will Reshape The Business Landscape.” The article advocated that companies should speed up in targeting this expanding “grey” market and cited examples of businesses around the world with innovative ideas appealing to older consumers. I’ve also echoed this view with my blog post last year titled, “Marketers Gradually Understand Potential Of Boomers.”

So I read with great delight the Special Report on The Economics Of Longevity in the July 8-14, 2017 issue of The Economist again. The report has basically argued that “if employers, businesses and financial services adapt to make far more of such people (the older population), big economic benefits for everyone could follow.” Employers need to change their attitudes towards older employees – ageist recruitment practices need to be discarded and corporate cultures have to change. Instead of reducing productivity and, therefore, hurting the economy, academics have found that older people in multi-generation teams tend to boost the productivity of those around them, and such mixed teams perform better than younger, single-generation ones.

The publication also argued that the second thing that needs to happen is for the benefits of longer, healthier lives to be spread much more equitably. There is currently too much of a gap between the rich and the poor among the older generation, and the best way to resolve this issue is for governments to invest in public health, offer universal access to healthcare and provide high-quality education for everyone. Although the report cited Canada as a good example of a country that manages to attach great importance to such matters, we see and read Canadian media reports everyday that lament how the older generation has not saved enough and cannot afford to retire.

I believe there is a third thing that needs to change: the marketing community and the media need to direct their energy and attention to the greying population. Over the last decade, there has been lacklustre progress in marketing to older people because this is not perceived as sexy. Young people continue to dominate marketing departments and think that the best place for the old is out of sight, out of mind. Although change is in the air, it is not happening fast enough. From aging rockers such as The Rolling Stones who can still fill huge concert arenas; to recent retirees who take on second careers as giggers and entrepreneurs; to older consumers who display young and active tastes in adventure travel and dating websites, “the new old” is defying old age and refusing to disappear into their sunset years.

In fact, The Economist is asking for a new branding of those over 65 but not yet elderly. The youngest Canadian boomers turn 51 and the oldest turn 70 this year. I used to call those people aged 65-70 “leading-edge boomers” and the younger ones “trailing-edge boomers”. But, perhaps, the marketing community can put their heads together and start coining a sexier term. Don’t call this group seniors although they are technically senior citizens. Baby boomers are starting to retire in large numbers in better health and with more money to spend than any previous generations. We feel much younger than our parents did at their age, and most of us have no intention of quietly disappearing from the world. The sooner the market can respond to this huge opportunity, the better our economy will be.

Photo Credit: Variety.com

A number of recent incidents led me to ponder how far women have progressed in the workplace. Barbara Walters’s retirement last week finally happened amidst great fanfare with lots of women celebrities cheering for her. They included Hillary Rodham Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Diane Sawyer and Jane Pauley. Whether you like her or not, going out at 84 is still a great accomplishment for somebody who has been a trailblazer for half a century in TV journalism. Walters said that her biggest accomplishment throughout these years was when young female journalists came up to her and told her that she has inspired them to join the profession.

During the same week, The New York Times ousted its award-winning executive editor Jill Abramson in an abrupt change of leadership. Her hiring just less than three years ago also made history – she was the first woman to run the newspaper. Her dismissal was met with disappointment by some women in the newsroom, and could be perceived as a step backward in the cause of female leadership in the news industry. According to the newspaper, the 60-year-old former executive editor’s tense relationship with the publisher and chairman of The New York Times Company, Arthur O. Sulzberger, was one of the main reasons for her sudden dismissal. It was also rumoured that she was annoyed to discover she wasn’t making as much money as her predecessor Bill Keller.  According to The Globe and Mail, the Times has denied these allegations, but Ms. Abramson has hired a lawyer to look into the discrepancies. This apparently struck her bosses as “especially combative.” She was also described as “bossy” although the official reason given for her dismissal was “arbitrary decision-making, a failure to consult and bring colleagues with her, inadequate communication and the public mistreatment of colleagues.” All these terms smell of sexist hostility.

Coincidentally, the first female editor of the influential French newspaper Le Monde, Natalie Nougayrede, was also fired the same week for being “authoritarian” and “Putin-like”. Technically, Ms. Nougayrede resigned as a result of a senior staff revolt. She wrote that she “cannot accept being undermined as head of the paper.” According to her, she “no longer has the means to run it with all the necessary peace and serenity that is required.”

These are two brilliant female journalists who are now history. Whether there’s any truth to their autocratic management styles remains to be uncovered. But as the first female partner in the Toronto office of Canada’s largest public relations firm back in 1997, I certainly see the pros and cons of being the ‘first’ woman in any industry. When men are tough in their management styles, they are perceived as doing their jobs. When women exhibit an uncoventional management style, they are often labelled as “bossy” and “bitchy”.

Elizabeth Renzetti of The Globe and Mail wrote over the weekend that 40 years after a group of heroic female employees launched a discrimination suit against The New York Times, women in newspapers still make, on average, just 83 percent of men’s wages. In Canada, just 10 percent of the highest posts in Canada are held by women, according to a 2006 survey; and 23 percent in the U.S. We certainly still have a long way to go!

Then there’s Hillary Rodham Clinton who has all kinds of criticisms thrown at her, particularly by the Republicans, because she’s almost certainly going to run for President in 2016. “Too bossy”, “too old”, “too tough” – none of these comments would have been attached to male Presidential candidates of the same age! In spite of the U.S.A.’s position as the most liberal, developed country in the world, it’s still lacking a woman at the helm so far!

In my 14 years’ tenure as a woman partner in my former agency, I’ve earned a reputation of being very tough, but fair. But I’ve never been described as “nice” because I believe I was in my capacity not to win a popularity poll, but to get things done. So, while many more women are striving to break the glass ceiling, let’s remember what Sheryl Sandberg said in her best-selling book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will To Lead, “Real change will come when powerful women are less of an exception. It is easy to dislike senior women because there are so few.” And let’s hope in the future, we no longer have to label any women “the first woman” in any industry or sector. As Sandberg said, “In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders.”

I’ve previously blogged about reverse mentoring, so I read with interest that this was the topic of a recent news article from The Globe and Mail. According to the newspaper, more and more companies are seeing the importance of not only the old mentoring the young in the workplace, but reverse mentoring (meaning the young mentoring their more mature colleagues) can re-energize older employees, engage younger workers and bridge the workplace generation gap.

Many younger members of the workplace are coaching their boomer colleagues on how to use social media for internal and external communications. This new type of mentoring involves the traditional roles being reversed and junior employees taking on the role of teacher to their more experienced co-workers.

Pioneered just over a decade ago by former General Electric CEO Jack Welch, reverse mentoring has been embraced by an increasing number of companies, including Ernst & Young, General Motors and Procter & Gamble. Welch’s idea originally was to help boomers at his company learn about new technology, in particular the Internet and email. Today, companies are using reverse mentoring to encourage other types of learning. Junior mentors can, for example, help their managers understand how to motivate and retain young workers. They can also provide knowledge of a younger customer base. Some companies are using reverse mentoring to enhance diversity training for senior staff.

There’s always the challenge of persuading senior managers to embrace the role reversal and start taking advice instead of always giving it. They also need to suspend their judgement of the younger generation often called the ‘entitlement’ generation. It’s important for mentoring partners to actually make the relationship work. People who are willing to do role-reversals in mentoring need to go in with an open mind.

In my opinion, it’s fair exchange. Learning something new everyday should not have age limits. So If young people can benefit from their boomer co-workers’ experience and knowledge in the office, I’m sure boomers can equally benefit from their younger colleagues’ words of wisdom to bridge generation gaps.

On the last day of 2011, it’s time to review what has happened in the past year and look forward to new year resolutions and projections. 2011 has not been a bad year at all for smart boomer women.

This year, The New York Times announced its first-ever woman Executive Editor, Jill Abramson, who’s also a proud mother of two and a well-known lover of dogs. In Canada, two of our national TV news channels – Global TV and CTV – each appointed its own woman chief news anchor: Dawna Friesen and Lisa Laflamme respectively. Also in 2011, CBC’s Executive Vice President of English Services Kirstine Stewart was named ‘Person of the Year’ by Canada’s film and television industry magazine Playback. In the past year, her push to increase CBC’s Canadian content proved to be a success after ratings of popular shows like Dragon’s Den.

In business, the Report on Business Magazine crowned the first woman chief executive of the year – Lululemon Athletica’s Christine Day. She was chosen for “her ability to create a remarkable bond between the brand and its ultra-loyal fans.”

In the political scene, 2011 also proved to be a banner year for Canadian women. We now have four women premiers for the first time in history – B.C.’s Christy Clark, Alberta’s Alison Redford, Newfoundland and Labrador’s Kathy Dunderdale, and Nunavit’s Eva Aariak. The House of Commons also has a record 76 women as a result of the May federal elections.

On an international level, Canada was named the third best country for women by Newsweek, after Iceland and Sweden. According to The Huffington Post, though we still rank poorly in equal representation in government, Canada proved to be a leader for justice, health and education for women – giving us an overall score of 96.6.

In spite of the strong progress, the ratio of female senior executives at Fortune 500 companies declined this year, according to a new tally, suggesting women still have a long way to go in achieving gender equality in business.

Women held 14.1 percent of the C-suite positions this year, down slightly from 14.4 percent last year, says the report released in December by Catalyst, an international advocacy group for women in business. The findings mirror the organization’s most recent study of Canadian corporations, where only 17.7 percent of senior officer positions were held by women in 2010. The Canadian number is higher than in the U.S. because the Financial Post 500 list of companies used in the analysis includes Crown Corporations, which have nearly twice as many female senior executives as publicly-traded companies.

According to Catalyst, women are not rising to the top because they don’t have access to as many professional networks as male employees, or to mentors at higher ranks who can take them under their wing and guide them. Let’s hope that in the new year, women boomers of all ranks will continue to mentor the younger generation, show them the ropes and empower them to maximize their best potential – whether in business, politics, law, communications, arts, technology, finance, education, hospitality or media.

Happy New Year!