No Time to Prepare for This Leadership Crisis

In a recent TV interview I watched, with the president of Delta Airlines, he was talking about how the airline has managed to not lay off any workers in this economic downturn. And the “solution” was that 20% of employees have taken early retirement throughout the summer.

So who are those 20%? Clearly older generations. Who's eligible for early retirement, but Boomers and maybe some Gen X, depending on how long they've been with the company. This is a serious problem for organizations. I know they have to downsize. I know they have to conserve funds right now, but this is going to have an incredible boomerang effect when they need to ramp up again, when the economy turns. When the business climate turns and companies start to ramp up their offerings again, there are going to be so few leaders left in organizations.

It's a real concern. It's a real concern for business owners, managers, the people who were left in the ranks at organizations, because the question is “who is left to run the companies?”

If the Boomers are gone, if the older generation Gen Xers are gone, the people who have the history of the company, the culture of the company, years of experience and knowledge within that company... if those folks are gone, who is left to run the organization?

Now clearly there are younger generations, younger people in the organization. But do they have the knowledge and the skills the older generations do? Will they have the same leadership abilities as the folks who are leaving the organization? This is something that keeps me up at night. I worry for the state of American businesses. This is something that was supposed to happen in 2030 - according to the US Census - all the Boomers would be out of the workforce by 2030.

It worried me then when it was a 2030 deadline, but at least companies had time to prepare. There's no time. The Boomers and some older Gen Xers are leaving organizations - voluntarily or not - and there's a much younger cadre of individuals left in organizations who will have to step up, into leadership positions, whether they have leadership skills or not.