Interview with Ken Dychtwald on Midlife Crisis
February 2009 - By Dr. Nagendra V Chowdary

Ken Dychtwald
Ken Dychtwald, founding president and CEO of Age Wave

superior segmentation of the American workforce. The massive study included interviews with 7,718 adult employees, and was designed to empower companies with landmark insights into the attitudes and needs of all generations of workers.Many of the insights from this proprietary research can be found in Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills and Talent written by myself, Bob Morrison and Tamara Erickson (Harvard Business School Press).

• Who are midcareer employees? What are their unique/typical behavioral characteristics?
  In terms of demographics, life stage, and career stage, midcareer workers – those between the ages of 35 and 54 – are, naturally, in between the extremes of the younger and older cohorts. Many are well educated, and in the US are twice as likely as their parents to earn high school and college degrees. In the US this cohort is 76% non-Hispanic white (versus 61% for the young cohort and 88%for themature). Perhaps most significantly, this cohort is gender diverse. The boomers were the first real industrialage generation of working women, with 80% choosing to work outside the home for reasons other than the extraordinary circumstances of war. Having come of age in the 1960s and 1970s– a time of global social upheaval – this cohort is cause oriented. Midcareers prefer to see the big picture and think in terms of a life’s mission. The assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Malcolm X, as well as the civil rights movement, women’s liberation, and antiwar protests, sparked the desire to do something meaningful with their lives. Thus, they hope to embrace the vision, mission, and ambition of their companies. Ambitious, idealistic, self-reliant, and competitive, they want to prove their worth, and so expect clear rules of performance measurement, focusing on both individual and group merit.
  Unlike today’s youth, this cohort did not “grow up digital,” though it witnessed the advent of space exploration. The older ones were among the last to take their mathematics and engineering exams with slide rules rather than personal computers or even handheld calculators. Yet, they have learned to apply information technology quite cleverly throughout their careers, pioneering such methods as business reengineering to reshape how corporations work. Among their strengths, today’s midcareer workers are motivated, flexible, and people oriented. Their accumulated experience and knowledge are valuable, and they havemore soft skills and customer-service orientation than the younger cohort. Among their potential weaknesses are a distrust of leadership and tendency to be self-absorbed.
  The New Employee/Employer Equation Study revealed that midcareer workers’ average tenure is ten years, but that number can be deceiving: 42% have been with their employers for five years or less, and 39% for more than ten. One in four has supervisory or managerial responsibility, and among those, one in three is a midlevel or seniormanager.While the preponderance are employed by forprofit enterprises, this cohort is the most likely (27%) to work in some form of government service (including government provided education and health care).
  Midcareer employees work longer hours than other generations of workers, yet just 33% feel energized by their work, 36% say they feel that they are in dead-end jobs, and more than 40% report feelings of burnout. Midcareer employees are the least likely to say that their workplace is congenial and fun and that it offers ample opportunity to try new things. They have the lowest satisfaction rates with their immediate managers and the least confidence in top executives. Only one in three agrees that top management displays integrity or commitment to employee development, and one in four often disagrees with the organization’s policies on important employee matters. A fifth are seeking opportunities in other organizations, and a similar percentage are looking for a major career change. But 85% believe that career changes are very difficult these days.
  Family and financial pressures outside work make them conservative in their career choices, andmany cannot afford moves that would involve cuts in pay or benefits. In short, far too many midcareer employees are workingmore, enjoying it less, and looking for alternatives.

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