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O P I N I O N
T here is a standoff between younger talents’ needs and older talents’ interest and ability to engage and develop them. It’s the future versus a non-functional or sustainable status quo. To succeed, we need to reimagine work in the context of today’s actual constraints and the reality of a forever-changed world. Playing to win requires a real investment in organizational redesign, and the creation of both a vision and a culture that’s worth the work. Who will win the talent standoff?
Peter Atherton
THE PROBLEM. Organizationally, too many of us are in the functional shape of an hourglass. We have little “middle,” and what we do have continues to be overloaded and piling up with pressure moving upward, and not downward in the organization where more capacity exists. Our “middle” are our managers: 30- to 40-somethings in age with “10 to 15 years or more of experience.” Few exist. It’s just math as a result of the Great Recession – but we still haven’t adjusted. Without reimagining and redesigning the role of the manager, we need to be very careful that the few we have don’t just walk away. This concern also extends to talent with 20 to 30 or more years of experience.
than ever with both work and rework. At the same time, most of their jobs have expanded to doer- seller, supervisor and coach/mentor, new business developer, and client-experience expert – all with little to no training or set of clear expectations.
Something has already “given.”
As a result, manager and principal talent is burning out and disengaging more – all the while junior talent is bored, starving for attention and opportunities, and frustrated they’re not coming. There are many options to improve our work and our workflow – but just hoping for change or ignoring the need for a structural and functional redesign is a path to failure and missed opportunity.
See PETER ATHERTON, page 4
Managers and principals alike are more overloaded
THE ZWEIG LETTER JUNE 7, 2021, ISSUE 1395
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