By Karen and Erica

We in the Boomer generation know a lot. We failed to create a perfect world for the next generations, as the OK Boomer brigade contends, and left much for them to do, but what we know may help those generations maintain progress toward that perfect world. We love the phrase: the younger can run faster, but the older know the shortcuts.

Sadly, in many cases our knowledge is going to disappear when we retire. The shortcuts will have to be learned all over again.

Richard Eisenberg in Next Avenue reports:

“What is described as the systematic failure of companies to mine their pre-retirees for critical knowledge and intellectual property is part of a general failure to appreciate the value of who and what is walking out the door of today’s knowledge-based employers… Wasting the talents of a whole generation and crippling the potential effectiveness of the next cohort precludes the kind of creative win-win solutions that our economy and contributors need.”

Or, more succinctly: That’s a lot of knowledge to go pfffft.

For example, eight million people were born in Japan between 1947 and 1949, a Boomer generation that is large and compressed. But, as is true everywhere, as Boomers leave the workforce little thought has been given to storing the know-how and expertise of the Boomer generation. A recent article (paywall) in the Financial Times outlined the situation: young people do not want to take over their parents’ businesses, so the businesses, and the expertise associated with them, are aging or dying out—or are being bought by big corporations.

According to recent government figures, the single biggest cohort of business owners in Japan are 69-year-olds. Demographics have long posed huge challenges to the country’s rapidly shrinking and ageing population. But the national shortage of heirs was largely overlooked. Two years of pandemic restrictions have deepened the sense of urgency. Many owners in their mid-seventies have chosen to accelerate plans to either hand over control or watch their cherished firms disappear. As a consequence, Japan faces what some fear could be the most extensive evaporation of knowhow and institutional memory in modern history.

What to do? At least some companies are preparing, by anticipating who will retire over the next five to ten years, and creating strategies for knowledge transfer. One of the best strategies, of course, is intergenerational work teams, where knowledge is transferred organically.

Long before you’re planning retirement parties, start bridging the gap with intergenerational teams and mentor programs.

As Forbes points out, younger workers are keen to work with Boomers. They know we know a thing or two.

According to research, 75% of millennials want a mentor, and they want them to be from the boomer generation. Creating and fostering intergenerational work teams allows knowledge and expertise to transfer gradually and cooperatively.

That may be difficult with smaller, entrepreneurial businesses, which younger people do not want to take over. But it is not impossible. Many businesses, like this one, Lustre, could not function without its team of younger, tech savvy colleagues. We learn a lot from them but we like to think they are learning from us as well.

Another key idea is to change how we do retirement. There’s no good reason why the work/no work transition should be so binary. We have written before about Avivah Cox-Wittenberg’s idea to Kill the Cliff.

The traditional retirement is a move from 100% employed to 100% retired. Overnight. Flex the model and offer older employees a range of flexible employment options that can taper over time. Older workers hold a lot of knowledge and expertise, but many may no longer need as much money - nor be ready for 24/7 work cultures. Motivation and engagement in later career may have more to do with sharing mastery and mentoring the next generations than it does with climbing the greasy pole or cashing in a year-end bonus. Make sure your incentive structure is age relevant. Simply extrapolating the ‘up or out’ linear career models that are still often the default ignores a huge – and growing – talent pool.

Given the size of the Boomer generations in many countries, the brain drain is imminent, or underway. We should all be creatively thinking about how to transform the working world to allow younger people to benefit from our knowledge without requiring us to work as we did when we were climbing the ladder. Our new life expectancy calls for fresh ideas about how we all work—together.

We worked hard to achieve what we did. Let’s not allow our achievements to disappear.