What role do managers have in contributing to a corporate mid-life crisis?
Often, the existing managers are the problem. They have little to gain from investing in the new and are most comfortable with the old ways of proceeding. When the 47-year-old John Browne became BP’s group CEO in 1995, he explicitly set out to place operating power in the hands of the next generation who could pursue new opportunities aggressively. He and his team broke BP’s bureaucratic organization into approximately 150 business units, each overseeing an oil field, chemical plant, regional marketing area or other operation. Browne then handed the keys to these businesses to a new generation of managers, most of whom were in their 30s or early 40s. This was a massive transfer of power because those operations collectively generated over $120 billion in revenues by 2001 and employed more than 100,000 people. But what to do with the heroes from the last war? In many organizations, the biggest obstacle to a generational shift comes from seasoned executives who want to maintain an active
