10. Baby Boomers Are Still Driving The Gravy Train. You might be sick of hearing about them, but men and women over the age of 50 hold 76% of the assets and own the most products that pay (according to the Federal Reserve Board’s 2019 “Survey of Consumer Finances.”) But now they want to talk about different stuff. Note that when the bull market last bottomed in 2009, the baby boomers’ median age was only 53. Now it’s 66, and with that age comes a very different list of priorities. That means advisors have to refresh their pitches.
11. Comfort Is In For Good. Casual business clothes may be the best innovation in history. Stretchy material hides some of our Zoom belly and allows us to travel and commute and spill stuff. We love you, Lululemon. Also, Alphalete, Rawgear, BYLT, Hoka shoes. Business stories suggest many such companies have flourished during the pandemic. I’m never giving up my Hermès ties or scarves, but there is a new, more breathable world out there!
12. Hybrid Work Is Here To Stay. Working from home has been a godsend for time-starved commuters, self-motivated stars, employees with family care needs and geographically dispersed teams. But even so, there are problems. Productivity has dropped at many firms that depend on collaboration and internal social networks, or on an engaged customer service team. Looking to the future, I don’t know how younger employees will get coached and grow without their leaders helping them more directly. I don’t think you can pay people to care, and I don’t think we have to employ people who don’t.
13. Connectivity Is Productivity. Common to many of the items on this list is an idea that success in business is based on the ecosystem of delivery. Individual contributors often cannot achieve results in a complex world, whether we are talking about wine, retirement planning or supportive shoes. The dissemination of all these things requires accurate data driving better allocations of manufacturing resources, measured for higher quality, and delivered by distributors who understand the end users’ needs.
This all means we need to increase connectivity, and that will only be possible when business leaders are willing to learn continuously and make adjustments. Think of WSJ Wine, which is more of a distribution and customer service wonder than a product masterpiece. We know the service is merely distributing the overruns of winemakers. But who cares? Also, who cares if an employee proves they can be more productive at home? Business leaders in both cases should be considering only the end product or service as the primary guide of their decisions and making their real work the seamless connectivity of the ecosystem.
Too often we try to solve for one of the parts and cramp the rest of the system. Trying to fix working from home at this point is backward. Instead, we should find out if our products or service delivery can be supported by at-home workers. That way we could possibly avoid an oncoming managerial crisis in which we’re trying to evaluate at-home people versus on-site people. Is that really where we want to invest our time?
A Rearview Mirror
Typically, “Year in Review” articles are rearview mirror stories doubling as a window into the future. Every loss or setback in this crummy 365 days paves the way for a new way of looking at things or of doing things. If we do the same and expect different results, we guarantee not only the definition of insanity, we’ll have a 2023 not much better than 2022. We are better than that!
Steve Gresham is on a mission to improve longevity and “retirement.” He leads an industry initiative, Next Chapter, and is CEO of the Execution Project LLC, a consulting firm. He is also senior educational advisor to the Alliance for Lifetime Income.