How does an aging workforce play out as a management issue?
PFD: The fellow who works in a steel plant and takes early retirement at age 55, after 35 years, is physically worn out from very heavy physical work. And he is willing to sit for 20 years on a pier in St. Petersburg and dangle a fishing line in the water — maybe. But the sales manager who works 35 years is not physically worn out. We are not facing up to the demand to make knowledge jobs interesting, challenging. Somehow we make them dumb. In large part because we put so much emphasis on promotion. And by definition, promotion is for one out of ten. So you disappoint a great many. This emphasis on promotion is a post-World War II phenomenon resulting from earlier demographic changes. For example, between 1950 and 1975, in the major New York banks, 27 years went from being the length of time you served before being eligible to become a vice president, to being the age at which you could become vice president. When I first came to this country as a newspaper writer in the ’30s, you did
