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    The X Factor: Tapping into the Strengths of the 35- to 48-Year-Old Generation
    The X Factor: Tapping into the Strengths of the 35- to 48-Year-Old Generation
    The X Factor: Tapping into the Strengths of the 35- to 48-Year-Old Generation
    Ebook133 pages1 hour

    The X Factor: Tapping into the Strengths of the 35- to 48-Year-Old Generation

    By Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Lauren Leader-Chivee, Catherine Fredman and

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    About this ebook

    Gen Xers should be stepping into crucial leadership roles and starting families. However, this book reveals that Gen Xers are taking a different life path. Their extreme work schedules, strong career ambition, and changing mores contribute to their high level of childlessness. Gen X was hit by an economic triple whammy: college-related debt, multiple boom and bust cycles, and the housing slump. As a result, Gen X is the first generation not to match their parents’ living standards. These economic woes have hit Gen X the hardest. Boomers are not retiring, instead working an average of nine years longer than anticipated. This delays Gen X’s career progression, resulting in the feeling of stalled careers. Yet the turmoil and instability that have been an integral part of Xers’ lives have yielded unexpected benefits. Having been front and center for every major economic crisis of the past 30 years, Xers possess exactly the sort of resilience that organizations need as they face an uncertain future.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRare Bird Books, A Vireo Book
    Release dateSep 10, 2013
    ISBN9780988745643
    The X Factor: Tapping into the Strengths of the 35- to 48-Year-Old Generation
    Author

    Sylvia Ann Hewlett

    Sylvia Ann Hewlett is the founding president of the Center for Talent Innovation, a Manhattan-based think tank where she chairs a task force of eighty-two multinational companies focused on fully realizing the new streams of labor in the global marketplace. Her book Forget a Mentor: Find a Sponsor was named one of the ten best business books of 2013 and won the Axiom Book Award.

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      Book preview

      The X Factor - Sylvia Ann Hewlett

      9950.png9983.png

      This is a Genuine Vireo Book

      A Vireo Book | Rare Bird Books

      453 South Spring Street, Suite 531

      Los Angeles, CA 90013

      rarebirdbooks.com

      Copyright © 2014 by Sylvia Ann Hewlett

      All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, including but not limited to print, audio, and electronic. For more information, address: A Vireo Book | Rare Bird Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 453 South Spring Street, Suite 531, Los Angeles, CA 90013.

      Set in Orbi

      Distributed in the U.S. by Publishers Group West

      Portions of this book have been previously published.

      Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

      Hewlett, Sylvia Ann, 1946-

      Brainpower / Sylvia Ann Hewlett and The Center for Talent Innovation.

      p. cm.

      ISBN 978-0-9887456-4-3

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      1. Diversity in the workplace—United States. 2. Work and family—United States. 3. Women—Employment—United States. 4. Minorities—Employment—United States. 5. Homosexuality in the workplace—United States. 6. Generation X—Employment—United States. 7. Economics—Sociological aspects. 8. Cultural pluralism. I. The Center for Talent Innovation. II. Title.

      HF5549.5.M5 H49 2013

      658.3 —dc23

      To the band of heroes who spearheaded the creation of

      the Task Force for Talent Innovation:

      DeAnne Aguirre

      Deborah Elam

      Anne Erni

      Patricia Fili-Krushel

      JoAnn Heffernan Heisen

      Rosalind Hudnell

      Carolyn Buck Luce

      Horacio Rozanski

      Cornel West

      Billie Williamson

      Melinda Wolfe

      And to CTI’s senior team who have contributed

      so much to this body of work:

      Lauren Leader-Chivée

      Melinda Marshall

      Laura Sherbin

      Peggy Shiller

      Karen Sumberg

      Introduction

      The Difference Brainpower Makes

      The book you are holding in your hand or viewing on a screen is a celebration, compelling collection, and cause for optimism.

      Its publication, coinciding with the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Center for Talent Innovation, celebrates our growth—from a small New York-based nonprofit focused on issues of women’s retention and acceleration, to a global think tank that is changing how we conceive of and manage high-echelon talent worldwide.

      It collects, in one place, four of the many high-impact research projects the Center has conducted over the last decade. These studies embody our vision: that the full realization of brain power across the divides of gender, generation, geography, and culture is at the heart of both human flourishing and competitive success.

      And because this book showcases concrete action, it provides grounds for confidence in the future. The flagship project of the Center is the Task Force for Talent Innovation. Back in 2004 this group was composed of seven companies. Today it is composed of eighty companies and organizations and is a force to be reckoned with. Task Force members include leaders from American Express, Bank of America, Bloomberg, Booz Allen Hamilton, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Cisco, Deloitte, Deutsche Bank, EMD Serono, EY, GE, Goldman Sachs, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, NBCUniversal, Time Warner, and the International Monetary Fund, among others, and they have driven transformational change. Members have worked with great energy and commitment to turn the Center’s groundbreaking research into action on the ground. Together, we’ve seeded and developed hundreds of best practices. We’ve initiated programs and policies that meet head-on some of the most intractable problems in talent management. For example, how do employers get highly qualified women back on track after they have taken a career break? (our Off-Ramps and On-Ramps work), and how do we finally crack that last glass ceiling for multicultural professionals? (our Vaulting the Color Bar and Sponsor Effect work). We’ve expanded our research to probe other mature economies (the U.K., Germany, and Japan) as well as the growth hubs of the emerging world (Brazil, Russia, China, and India). And by seeking to showcase our work in high-profile publications such as the Harvard Business Review, we’ve ensured that our research and action benefit not only Task Force members, but all organizations that want to get the talent equation right. Perhaps most significantly, our brand new research—Innovation, Diversity and Market Growth, which demonstrates precisely how the full utilization of brain power across the talent pool, unlocks innovation and drives competitive success—is creating a new case for action and strengthens our conviction that the next ten years will bring an even greater measure of progress and success.

      Our Journey Over the Last Decade

      When I founded the Center back in 2004 it was clear that progress had stalled for women and other minorities. Leadership continued to be remarkably homogeneous, comprising a wall of white, straight men. Earlier waves of activism, rooted in the civil rights struggle and the women’s movements, had created access and opportunity for women and other previously excluded groups, to education and jobs—but diverse individuals remained clustered in the middle and lower reaches of most companies. This failure to find a seat at decision-making tables was the challenge I sought to address. In late 2003, calling on all the connections and goodwill I had accumulated in my career, I brought together a group of remarkable leaders who shared my frustration about the lack of diversity at the top: ten business leaders from Fortune 500 companies, four nonprofit directors, two distinguished scholars, two journalists, and a vice chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

      We convened at the venerable Century Club in midtown Manhattan for a lunch that stretched into five hours of impassioned discussion. With critical contributions from Cornel West and EY Senior Executive Carolyn Buck Luce, we agreed that a new wave of activism was required to get a significant number of women and people of color on track to positions of leadership. We also agreed that it was up to the private sector to provide the push as government seemed to be steadily retreating from policies that might further accelerate the progression of these groups. And we knew that no country could continue to waste so much highly qualified labor—so much brain power—and expect to prosper over the long term. By the end of the day we had conceived of a task force comprising senior executives from the world’s leading companies and organizations, allied with a newly formed think tank. The idea was that together, these newly formed entities would turn inquiry into programs, policies, and results. Shortly thereafter, in February 2004, we launched the Center for Work-Life Policy (CWLP) and its flagship project the Hidden Brain Drain Task Force, to spearhead the Center’s groundbreaking research.

      In 2012, the think tank was renamed the Center for Talent Innovation and the original task force became the Task Force for Talent Innovation. Those name changes were inspired by a need to align our brands, but also by a desire to signal the vastly increased scope, span, and impact of the Center and its Task Force. Our initial discussion about women in the U.S. has grown into a global conversation about how to accelerate the progress of all the underleveraged streams of talent in the global workforce: women, yes, but also people of color, LGBTs, and local talent in emerging markets—employees who have largely been left out of talent conversations and not sufficiently included in progression models.

      Today, our work impacts six million employees in 192 countries. Our influence has been felt from Bangalore to Beijing, from Tokyo to Rio de Janeiro, from Frankfurt to London, and many points in between. Our findings, insights, and agendas for action have been featured in the mainstream press as well as blue-chip business publications around the world—The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Sunday Times of London, The Guardian, Veja, The Times of India, South China Morning Post, The Economist, BusinessWeek and Forbes. We’ve appeared on Today, ABC World News, NBC Nightly News, and National Public Radio. Our online presence ranges from a featured blog with Harvard Business Online to regular posts on The Daily Beast and The Huffington Post. And our research resonates not just among talent managers and human resources specialists but with a wider audience. Articles have appeared in glossy magazines such as Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, MORE,

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